the eyeopener online: "Higher Learning Inc."

But what if we take Drucker's words in a different way? What if by distance learning, Drucker meant not co-op and correspondence courses, but an increasing sense of detachment? What if Drucker was speaking not so much about the crumbling of physical ivory towers, but of symbolic ones? And what if, as much as governments and big business, students are the ones to blame?

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Apathy, he says, is rampant. He recounts an incident from last year when a small group of students protesting the second inauguration outside Van Hall were beat up by police officers. "Nobody cared," he says. "They all felt the students deserved it. They said 'It disturbs classes.' That's the point!" What's left him bitter is not the quality of his professors or the courses he studied, but what he sees as an overemphasis on practicality amongst fellow scholars. "The attitude of so many students is: 'When am I ever going to use this again?'"

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"Philosophy asked the questions I was asking myself," he says. "It's helped me develop an appreciation for the pursuit of knowledge."

And yet this pursuit too often gets crowded out in today's universities by students looking to pad their resumes and "network."

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In Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs argues that every civilization has a purpose and that for North Americans, that purpose is mass employment. She notes that this can be seen in everything, from corporations and governments ignoring serious environmental issues because it will cost jobs, to the panicked hysteria of fourth-year students as they compete and scramble for summer internships.

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