[Carry_Okie]

What you are suggesting, is that I was incorrect in calling public education a 19th Century hierarchical institutional structure; it's a 16th Century hierarchical institutional structure. The demarcation of its functional demise should have been the declining cost of books, now artificially inflated only by restraint of trade (aka extortion) driven by the same bogus credentialing system.

Frankly, that points out an idea I had not contemplated, that the only borderline legitimate justification for public universities even in the 20th century was for purposes of pooling capital by which to subsidize military-industrial R&D. Now that the Internet has crashed the price of books, does putting the LOC online in fact socialize all copyright royalties?

[GladesGuru]

Paper based books can never approach the availability or low cost of Internet books.

While I like the low cost of old books brought about partly by Dewey’s ‘Dumbing Down”, I look forward to the day when I can download the original first edition of Churchill’s The River War, along with the commentaries of later minds who also examined his book and were moved toshare their perspectives.

A world wide “Invisible College” beats any bricks & mortar based (should I say ‘limited’) college on many parameters. Not the least of which is the ability to avoid the academented.