Artigo de Anthony Grafton no New York Review of Books para ser lido nesses tempos de invasões uspianas:

(…) Vast numbers of students come to university with no particular interest in their courses and no sense of how these might prepare them for future careers. The desire they cherish (…) is to act out “cultural scripts of college life depicted in popular movies such as Animal House (1978) and National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002).” Academic studies don’t loom large on their mental maps of the university. Even at the elite University of California, students report that on average they spend “twelve hours [a week] socializing with friends, eleven hours using computers for fun, six hours watching television, six hours exercising, five hours on hobbies”—and thirteen hours a week studying.

For most of them, in the end, what the university offers is not skills or knowledge but credentials: a diploma that signals employability and basic work discipline. Those who manage to learn a lot often—though happily not always—come from highly educated families and attend highly selective colleges and universities. They are already members of an economic and cultural elite. Our great, democratic university system has become a pillar of social stability—a broken community many of whose members drift through, learning little, only to return to the economic and social box that they were born into.

Altere National Lampoon por Diretório Acadêmico, e o que temos é o fim do mundo tal como conhecemos e, olhem só, não é para se sentir nada bem com isso.