I recognise a great deal of what you say, because I can attest to the fact that the masters degree has been dumbed down gradually, but greatly, since the 1990s when it was hard to get into, relatively inexpensive, but very picky

now basically if you have a pulse and a wallet you can get into a course and this is true across all institutions - at least in the English-speaking world, which is the only one that I know.

This marketisation of education follows the market very perfectly. Essentially, they charge what they think people are prepared to pay and they downgrade the product to the point where the customer loan longer buys it. We are not yet at that point, you are actually an outlier.
Most people do the course for the piece of paper, which they can then parade around, and say they were educated.

However, the best education always has involved a great deal of self-direction when it gets to the masters and PhD level. Generally you won’t be told what to read , only advised; you won’t be told what to think and what to do, but you are meant to engage with your peer group and with tutors to work out your ideas and develop them
now in a good masters degree or a good PhD. You’re gonna have excellent peers and excellent tutors. However, I don’t think institutions can guarantee that anymore and certainly as a person who used to work as a university teacher , we just aren’t paid enough hours to engage meaningfully with students so no, it probably is a complete rip off

But is education, therefore useless? well yes and no; it depends. I find that most of the people who performed poorly on a degree or dropped out were not usually stupid , but they really chose the wrong course
that can be for manyreasons : parents making them do , it they chose the course, purely to get a job, but perhaps didn’t even want to have that job ; or had the idea that they would be taught exactly what to do and have their hands held throughout the whole process, and when they discovered that no , higher degree is simply a framework for them to challenge themselves, they run away in fright. I’m not saying that you fell into any of those categories

Having worked in the education industry, (I’ve now left I find it disgusting) and also having been through it as a student (I don’t say customer because that wasn’t my experience butI think it is currently the experience of a lot of people )- I feel reasonably well qualified to share my thoughts about this. I think that the university sector has lost its way ;marketisation hasn’t worked. It hasn’t educated people better. It is provided way more people with a bit of paper, but I don’t think that the vast majority of people who go to university are not getting a great deal out of it, except maybe be a kind of fun social life.
Relatively few people in any society can really rise to the challenge of higher critical thinking. Let’s be honest . yep that is what university supposed to provide. Not a job university graduates are supposed to be the blue sky thinkers the people that can come up with really the new ideas. Do you see that happening no they’re way too many people with average minds holding a piece of paper that saying I went to university.. by the way I’m not trying to run down these people because actually we need them to society of only blue sky thinkers would be chaos.

I think we need to rethink the entire thing from bottom up but I think the chances of that happened is more or less zero, where do we go from here? I really don’t know and right now actually don’t care
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