Stephen Downes

Alex Usher gives the idea of 'massification' of university access a light overview, ending with a call to reconsider what we expected to get from it. There were three major failings, he says: job mismatch, underfunding and cost, and the lock the upper classes still held on elite institutions. And, he says, "there are huge swathes of the population that deeply resent the idea that they need to spend more time in school in order to enjoy a middle-class life." I don't think we can pin the rising inequality in society on universities, though there's a case to be made that they oversold promises of social mobility. I think we should offer higher education to anyone who wants it, because the social benefits are so great, but at the same time we need to somehow decouple the need for it from the possibility of having a good life.