He doesn’t mention it much but I really think the problem with Higher Education is that people are starting to realize how useless it’s become. I'll tell you how I became convinced of this.

(this is kind of long for a HN post but it's a funny story)

I was having a discussion with a room full of college graduates recently. The meeting was about how managers should, when they have to order employees to do something, go in with the mindset of convincing the employees that the decision is wise rather than just dictate it to them. In the discussion I jokingly said something like "Don’t go all Lenin on them". They countered by saying they didn’t understand what I meant. After a short and very confusing discussion I said I didn’t understand how they could equate what I was saying to what was done in Communist Russia. They responded by asking what Russia had to do with anything?

At that point it hit me: They were talking about John Lennon. They had no idea who Vladimir Lenin was.

The reason this had such an impact on me (aside from the obvious) is this: I’ve long been convinced that universities simply don’t care about practical skills anymore. A Computer Science graduate, for instance, can often graduate without having ever written a line of html, javascript or css. But the one excuse Universities had was that at least they were still teaching culture. This incident dispelled that myth for me and at that point I had lost all faith in the current university system.

I still believe in education but I don't believe Universities are providing a good one anymore.