Unfortunately this argument is based on a total misconception, namely, that universities exist to enable graduates to be "successes" and to make money. The fact that such a notion has taken hold is a testament to the utter bastardising of the idea of a university in this country - and by no means only here. Australian universities in general are now one big disaster zone, having followed the degenerate American model which decrees that anyone and everyone, no matter their intellectual (in)capacity, should have a "college degree", so that now there are thousands of institutions calling themselves universities (prize examples Liberty; Bob Jones) handing out "degrees" to certifiable morons.
Here now almost anything seems entitled to the name "university" and almost any course or "degree" qualifies for "university" status. No doubt we have appropriate courses in tap-dancing, raffia-work, and Ludo. Having worked in many universities around the world, in better and more honest days, I am now very glad to be retired.

Thanks again to everyone for commenting. Thought-provoking as always.

Voice’s comments puzzled me. Voice made some anodyne remarks about "the role of education in liberating the disadvantaged." Well yes, that is true in other contexts and times and places. But my article referred to current middle-class attitudes towards higher education in Australia - a quite specific context, and one in which I made the case that it is not so liberating. Voice has yet to address the case, except by repeating the myths which I was questioning, and which have led us to situations such as the below:

What would Voice say to the year 12 kids I dealt with at a south-western Sydney public school this year, most of whom believed their lives held no real opportunity because they were headed for a UAI of about 40? They seriously thought that missing university next year means their life is over. They did not get these beliefs from nowhere. They got them from well-meaning people placing a ridiculous over-emphasis on higher education, and under-valuing the fulfilment, inspiration and confidence one gains from carving out one's own path. As a result, these kids’ experience of education had been anything but 'liberating'.

And of course I don’t believe in a “natural social order”. The phrase is oxymoronic. “Natural” and “social” are mutually exclusive. In any case, how does my personal position affect the validity or otherwise of the case I presented?

And no, I certainly don’t want things to stay as they are. I don’t want kids in SW Sydney to continue thinking that their 12 years of education were wasted because they graduated without a UAI score sufficient to gain university entry. If that is where current attitudes have got us, then it’s quite reasonable to question the assumptions many people hold about tertiary education.

I will however take Voice’s advice to spend more time on my studies in education and sociology. Who knows, it might help me bridge the gap in my grades from their current high distinctions to something higher.

Meanwhile, davo’s statements provided the very answer to the problem he raised. As Davo said, you need “a degree, an apprenticeship or the appropriate experience” to get a job. The statement is true, obvious, and trivial. Who in their right mind would hire a person who had neither a formal qualification, a vocational qualification, or relevant experience? My article was lamenting the current over-emphasis among the middle-class on the former, at the expense of the two latter options, and the counter-productive effects this has wrought.

But I will always hold a special place in my heart for BITMAP’s submission, whose circuitous ramblings I was hard-pressed to navigate, but which led me to think at one point that I was being pegged as neo-conservative. Over the years I have, for my activities on various social issues, been called bleeding-heart, do-gooder, elitist, latte-sipping and leftist. So I will take BITMAP’s comments and frame them on my wall, as proof that there will always be someone more fringe than I.

Still, if I’ve got the conservatives calling me a bleeding-heart, and the leftists calling me a neo-conservative, I think I must be getting something right after all.

As for the teaching of critical thinking in schools, has BITMAP noticed the all-out political and media assault that is now taking place on the critical curriculum? “Critical thinking” will need strong defenders in the decades to come, so I don’t think my degree is going to become redundant any time soon.

Call it counter productive, call it unwarranted, but do not call this debacle a myth. A degree guarantees a job to any young person prepared to mow grass for the city. Failure to have one guarantees unwarranted discrimination, if not unemployment. The fix is in. The myth is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You suppose that education is for social mobility. You are a materialist. Why not recognize that the all-powerful education industry is too sacred cowish to fix? A Catholic bishop once said, “Give me the mind of a child when he is five, and I will keep it for all his life” or something to that effect. The priests of education (teachers) install the myth year on year from age 5 to adulthood. You are now acquiring a vested interest in a voracious beast, but you kick against the goad, will soon be a marked man. You are up against the beast that feeds you.

The education industry is to serve like any and every other industry. It is too critical to leave to teachers, just as justice and health are too critical to leave to doctors and lawyers, but look at how these professionals prosper themselves when the citizenry cedes control! Watch as service to the public declines.

The industry is selling ‘social mobility’ and failing to deliver? No. They assuredly deliver in relative terms, but there is a terrible price. The people who don’t have the degrees must not be allowed to buy or sell, for they do not bear the mark of the beast (a degree). They deliver by lowering the common denominator. It is a class thing.

Until we demand objectivism, we cannot speak of objectives. We cannot control the cost or the product. Soon you will cede to the cult or be marginalized. This cow is sacred and needs no purpose at all. It is a cause of its own. Education for the sake of education. The means justifies the end.