Teutonic Knight

The New Reality for Higher Education

My mind leads me to the 1951 black and white move "The Man In The White Suit" where Sir Alec Guinness plays Sidney Stratton, a brilliant and obsessed young researcher working in a textile mill. He invents an incredibly strong fibre which repels dirt and never wears out.

Stratton was unhappy because as the lady janitor one night joking said to him "...you haven't got that tie..." What she meant was that even Stratton graduated with First Class Honors from Oxbridge (supposedly can then walk on water), he did not attend one of those feeder schools of the power elites, and therefore, although he had the talents, he did not have the connections to move up fast in the corporate ladder.

The fact of the matter is that we humans like to create ghettos, be it the inner city slum, or the most exclusive prep schools.

The present situation with our colleges are about the same. The grad schools produce tons and tons of master's and PhD, but when you look closely of what they indulgences, most are "solutions looking for a problem".

They are the de facto ghettos.