The end of higher education

Newman's university has evolved, with remarkable speed, into a credential factory. Grade inflation has rendered failure almost extinct. Universities rarely measure what students learn, probably because they fear the answer is not much.

The final irony is almost too neat. By abandoning genuine learning and spending decades deconstructing truth and 'unlearning' the Western canon, universities have at last discovered their ideal academic: a machine that believes nothing, has read everything, and can produce infinite quantities of fluent slop on demand.

It was inevitable that they would offer it tenure.