Two tidbits

First, I like this bit from Dean Dad about comparing American higher ed with Norwegian higher ed.  After extolling the virtues of Norwegian higher ed and safety nets and all the things that well-educated, right-thinking liberal-minded Americans know to extol, he then extols something that we try to leave out of our right-thinking discourse because it's harder to fix:

Second, though -- and to me, this is the smoking gun -- in Norway, it’s still relatively easy to make a decent living in a blue-collar occupation. College is free, yes, but it’s also truly optional.

If we want to talk intelligently about higher education, we can’t separate it from the larger political economy. If we do, we’ll miss the point.

Centrist-minded educated professionals would rather not ask certain questions about our "service economy" and the policy decisions that got us there, so we decree that all class mobility problems will be handed off to higher education.  Well, higher education can't fix all of these problems, but nobody wants to hear that.  People want to hear that there are quick fixes, and that one way or another we will hand everyone a diploma and ask no questions about the inflationary consequences.

Second, I am nostalgic for the music of an earlier era, so I give you this song about quick fixes:

Now I know there are no secret tricks,
No correct politics,
Just liars and lunatics.