P1. It is well-known that the working classes during the industrial revolution engaged in learning for learning’s sake, sometimes going so far as to hire people to read to them while they worked. The intellectual cultures which have existed during different historical periods are more nuanced than you think. For ancient cultures, we have exceedingly little information—-discoveries are consistently made which reveal to us that our intuition about what these societies were like is usually incomplete or wrong. It’s tempting to extrapolate the current cultural moment but this isn’t always a good idea.
P3. Universities which are wholly funded by the state do not necessarily need to focus on profiting by maximizing the amount of job-focused career training they provide to students. The current incarnation of universities may make it seem like this is the case, but this is a pretty contingent viewpoint. In Europe, it is possible to get a college education for free or next to nothing. Although, there are also private universities which recognize that it is not always strategic to hit the rails with profit maximization: NYU decided to make their medical school free recently. There’s also the example of Walter Reed’s medical school. Clearly, there is also a difference in degree here: back in the 70s it was possible to get an excellent college education and pay for it with money made working over the summer. Not the case so much anymore.