The university system does not value students.

Tuition is overpriced, classes are overfilled,
cafeteria food is unhealthy, and creativity and passion
for learning go unrewarded. The students are conceived
of
as passive
recipients of information, rather than active
participants in learning. Moreover, many students
cannot even access the university for a number of
reasons, from financial challenges to family
obligations.

The university system does not value most professors.

More than 75% of professors are off the tenure track,
which means that have low wages and large teaching loads
with no opportunity for promotion to tenure
(source).
As New Faculty
Majority astutely observes, Faculty working
conditions are student learning conditions.

The university system does not value scholarship.

Rather, it values false proxies for scholarship, such
as grades, quantity of publications, and research grants.
When everybody’s time is taken up with these proxies, real
scholarship suffers.

The university system has a monopoly on learning.

In spite of all its faults, it is hard to imagine an
alternative.

This problem has ramifications on:

The public:

When doctors are miseducated, their patients bear the
cost. When teachers are miseducated, their students bear
the cost. When parents are miseducated, their children bear
the cost. And so on. Miseducation fails everyone.

The future of humanity:

We are in a perilous historical moment, and our
actions now will have ramifications on generations to
come. In order to act wisely in order to create the world
we want to live in, it is imperative that we have
mechanisms for societal self-reflection.

The systemically disadvantaged:

The university’s lack of support for its students and
professors has a disporportionate impact on those who are
already most neglected by our society, such as BIPOC,
LGBTQ, undocumented peop