denverpilot
Tied Down
This may have something to do with Academics not really being Academics, and more political than ever.
Education based in fact, is still pretty well-regarded. People do seek out information. Education based in a Tenured Professor's opinion, well... opinions are a dime-a-dozen and not worth paying to hear in many cases.
Case in point: Ward Churchill. His racist BS wasn't worth anyone paying to hear it. The Academics started by defending it as the usual "well-rounded Education", but it eventually deteriorated into the obvious -- he was completely out of control and even his peers and management couldn't touch him.
His diatribe certainly was not worth paying interest on student loan debt for. His classroom wasn't about giving his students the very best Education he could, it was about using it as his bully political pulpit.
Eventually the only way his peers and bosses could get rid of him was to prove plagiarism.
Looking in from outside, would you pay to be taught by that system?
Academia has made their own system too difficult to clean up. The best teachers don't knock bad teachers out of their jobs, because they can't. Most folks don't need an Education to logically conclude that's not an organization you want to get an education from.
You also can't find much independent evaluation of Academia. They evaluate themselves. That screams "buyer beware" to anyone who has to pay cash to be there.
Academia is one of the most powerful special interests in the Country, behind Government. The backlash against Academics, true Academics, is probably displaced anger at the overall corruption of the organizations they work for.
These are the same organizations that seeing the loss of the Fourth Estate in the media, promptly closed their Journalism schools, right? No job market for real Journalists, we'll just give up.
