[Takeda Shingen]

Save your lecture, Skybird. I am not impressed. Very well, I will hold your hand through it.

The problem with higher education in countries like New Zealand and the United States is very simple. Colleges and universities have been run on the business model for about 60 years now. Tuition is life. As schools have begun to see the benefits of increased revenue, the floodgates opened and college enrollment skyrocketed across the board. The end result is that tertiary education has become an industry first and a tool for societal progress and benefit second.

I teach at a rather well-respected university. Even there, each year I see an increasing number of students coming into my classroom who are ill prepared for the academic rigors of school (which have not changed at all Skybird, sorry to ruin your narrative). I sit on the audition pannels, and we are shall we say 'encouraged' to accept certain quotas of students. That quota is not gender-based, race-based or ethnicity-based. It is simply a number. The university wants X number of butts in the seats for the fall semester. The end results is having students in the university that should not be in the university.

So what's the big deal? Just fail them, right? Not quite. Once they are there, the university wants to keep them there. Having a high turnover is bad for PR, as you can't claim that 'X% of our students graduate and move on to careers in their field' in your commercials. So, once again, the professor is 'encouraged' pass students who shouldn't pass. It is the bane of my existence; the last week of every semester results in a rather uncomfortable confrontation between myself and the Provost's office. See, I refuse to play ball, and I fail students that deserve to fail. I have my tenure, so the university cannot dismiss me for it. Granted, I will never be a department chair, but I am fine with that. I stand on principle.

This problem has trickled both up and down. Postgraduate programs, as your blogger hero has noted, suddenly 'producing' an increasing number of students that do not cut the mustard. Yet, the quality of the programs themselves have not changed, it is simply that universities have begun cashing in there as well. For pre-undergraduate affairs, an entire industry has sprung up around getting your child into the college of their choice. Aside from the obvious sham that the SATs have become, one can hire tutors and agencies to coach the child through the entire application process -- what to say, where to say it, how to write it, etc.

So what does Finland do better? Simple, their university system is not privatized. The industry does not exist there. Students are admitted based on a single test, not an interview, not an essay, not any of the things that allow for a flood of new students. It is about education, not money. Contrast this to what happens stateside. Schools are constantly expanding and constructing new buildings. And what are they constructing? New lecture halls? No, dorms. Go figure.

It is the elephant in the room, the answer is so obvious, but no one wants to talk about it. The reasons are various. For many politicans in my country, acknowleding this problem ruins the narrative that privatization is the answer to everything. For individuals such as your blogger hero and yourself, it ruins your opportunity to project your pet peves into the mix; in this case, political correctness, gender equality and multiculturalism. Such projection does not address the real and dangerous problem, and that is why you, Skybird, and your blogger hero have earned my scorn. You play a dangerous and destructive game to advance your political agenda at the expense of the system of education.