Simmons says:

Never having gone to college all I can say to Dave is that by not doing so has done me immeasurable good. College produces a script for the average or slightly above average white or Asian, and for the most part little else aside from a little technical training on the side. Once these kids receive these scripts they lose nearly all their curiosity. Because why would they need to ask questions, mommy prof supplied all the answers.

From the word go the BUGS entry has been: “You have to have outgrown a college education, whether you had one or not.” I think I might use that as a leadin to asking people to read BUGS.

On a more general point, in a healthy free society people routinely feel that they have outgrown institutions. Why am I the only former professor who saw the whole thing as the pure fraud it is? National Review went to pieces at my 1976 demand that we stop wasting money on an “education” myth.

But they are still desperate to stay in good with the priesthood of our established religion.

Lately, a third of a century later, NR had a cover article about young people realizing they’ve been cheated. But they keep talking about “reform.” They are “disenchanted” with “education” as provided today. Every other institution has a number of ex-members who say it is all a fraud and a waste and worse. But when it comes to the academic bureaucracy, I seem to be the only person who came out of it and OUTGREW it.

What I said in 1976 is truer today. The last thing we need is some monopoly giving “accreditation” to specific institutions to provide what t hey call “education.” ALL institutions that get that sort of monopoly go berserk, but no one else seems to even notice it IS a monopoly.