The death of universities cannot happen soon enough. If only to force them to genuinely re-evaluate all of their stupid decisions over the last 50 years so that future generations can avoid the same fate.
Whether or not the thing we call "universities" continues to exist into the indefinite future is not of particular concern to me.
The primary thing I'm concerning myself with in this conversation is the recurrent and myopic belief among the HN commentariat that everything, especially anything that isn't STEM, needs to fit into the bottom line of some profit structure to be worth any of society's time and effort.
we are talking way more fundamental things here. If all of society suddenly had a ton of humanity major knowledge but no farming knowledge, society dies.
The government is only able to subsidize a luxury like humanities majors because all the other basic needs are taken care of by the miracles of technology created by engineers and physicists. Otherwise, everybody would still be doing subsistence farming to survive and wouldn't have time for the humanities anyway. You can't fake productivity and economic output, it all comes down to technology
How about a severe and widening disconnect between the people paying for the loans, the people guaranteeing the loans, and the measurable value received by the recipient?