Cult of university, Ctd @ericabuist: "We've done what you asked,society! Release the jobs!"

Erica Buist (@ericabuist) is the founder of the How To Be Jobless blog and now works on the Guardian Digital Journalism Scheme. She wrote a fantastic blog 'Telling a young person to 'Just get a job' is like going to the Sahara and yelling 'Just rain!'.' She said:  

"Today's youth has spent years chasing qualifications no one ever asks us about. The notion that algebra would ever be useful seemed fishy, but the grownups insisted: education, no matter how apparently arbitrary, leads to jobs."

Money quote right here:

"The minute we graduated, something switched in employers' heads. The same generation who had us sit Sats and the 11-plus and the 12-plus and Sats again and mock GCSEs and real GCSEs and AS-levels and A-levels and BAs and MAs and MScs and PhDs decided education is an afterthought. Experience is what's really important."

Another great bit:

"Lest we forget, our parents and teachers asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, then demanded a ransom of education, good grades, experience and a charming interview manner. We've done what you asked, society! Release the jobs!"

More:

"We were told that education was a ticket to employment when really it's more like vague directions to the station."

The answer to all this, as I said before here on the Huffington Post:

"We owe [young people] an ethical duty to inform, enlighten and guide them."

We need young people who are "alert and knowledgeable" to university and the job market. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the free university model here. He also said during his Military-Industrial Complex Speech in 1961:

"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals."

Likewise, there is a University-Business Complex. And only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper running of the university system and guard against its exploitation by business interests. As I've shown previously, There Is No Business Like the University Business, and so it needs public scrutiny. And so as Richard A. Matasar said:

"If a law school [and university in general] can't help its students achieve their goals we should shut the damn place down."