I dont agree with that.

THe majority of university courses don't require one to be in the environment - e.g. medicine does in contrast.

Employers frankly don't care about that - what they care about is 'are you going to be productive?'. Therefore what Universities have failed to understand is that students don't even care about the experience anymore - they want confidence that by the time they are 21 they will be employable.

Essentially what I'm pointing at - that you are missing - is that the University system is one-dimensional whilst not addressing the issues re. the bridge to the labour market and what employers demand. Something else, something much better is necessary that re-organises and disrupts the existing university model. I actually have a solution in mind, however, it's going to cause so many prof's who just collect a pay-cheque to lose their job that it'll cause a riot so I don't see people willing to push it through.

FYI I have spoken to many CEO's across a myriad of firms of varying complexities and sizes - they all fall on the same conclusions as I've stated. They simply do not care and want people who will be productive, particularly in-line with specifics of what the job entails, from day one. There is very little patience and resource allocated towards training anymore than years-past.

Not everyone wants this though.

"You absolutely should be able to get a degree with top marks without attending a single lecture, seminar, lab, whatever, just by reading the material and interacting with those around you less formally, and never being actively 'taught' anything."

So people should pay 9k a year to get a glorified piece of paper, when they essentially have taught themselves?

Ah yes, now we are getting to the heart of the issue.

Universities as they exist are not fit for the year 2026. THe year 1990? Yes, absolutely! The world has changed massively since then. It is less attractive to sacrifice years of earnings - which bring much greater experiences than what you get at uni + debt repayments of student loans to finance tuition fee's which have grown sharply from 3k/year to 9k/year and so on.

A nicer framing is original ideas and original thinking in general is very hard and doesn't come around very often.

Steve Jobs once said a thing about the belief that an idea is 90% of the work is a disease. He is and was absolutely right.

Also humans are not bots.

We hate having to feel like we have to double check everything. We have an asymmetric relationship with gains and losses etc.

Is it me or is this stuff flying over peoples heads?