Is Higher Education Turning into Busy Work?

Is higher education turning more into busy work as a result of the weatherman's lies?  Wait a minute, let's back up a bit, shall we? What I want to say is that I was talking to a friend of mine, and she was saying that she feels that college is busy work.  At first she said that she thought it was just her.  She is taking 18 credits a semester in order to graduate in 5 years (she is required to take a minor in her program).  She stated that she noticed that it was not just her program, but almost everyone she knows at her school is taking the same type of course load.

Now, it took me well over 6 years to graduate from college, but that was because I was kicked off of the financial aid program in my undergrad due to getting three F's one semester.  The reason I got such low grades was due to not being able to pay my rent and being evicted due to a financial aid mix up at my school.  I appealed to the dean and was able to get my financial aid reinstated, even though my credit was ruined.  Later I would transfer to another university and have to take many extra courses. 

The conventional way of learning currently states that the more students go to class and read commercially manufactured textbooks, the better they will be able to get jobs and work for an overlord.  Further, conventional wisdom now states that EVERYONE should go to college.  And you see hundreds of thousands of young ones enrolling into five year programs in order to have a small chance of getting a job.  It's insanity!

Conventional wisdom has raped and pillaged our modern world.  The weatherman spouts lies about the weather, and people actually buy into it (I don't check the weather anymore, as it makes me go into a Con Dar rage).  People are told that there is a certain way to live life (such as go to school, get married, make babies, buy a big house, grow old, retire, die).  But just like the current model of education, that model is seriously broken.  It is as if the point to education is more and more about making money and not about making people smarter.  At one time it seems that going to college was a role for the aristocracy.  People who went to the university changed the world.  Now a person goes to the university in order to work at Wal-Mart (a recent opening of Wal-Mart stores, often considered the worst place in the U.S. to work, had thousands of applicants, some with masters degrees!).  We now pay from $30,000 to $50,000 a year in order to compete for a minimum wage job.  As a result, those who consider themselves to be overachievers go on to law school, where they think they will have a chance to make more.  In other words, the reason people go to law school is so that they will not have to work at Wal-Mart. 

"My soup is more elite than your soup, daddy."

How do we fix higher education?  Do we say that "only a small percent of people - the richer portions of society - can go?  Or, do we say "allow everyone who wants to go enter, but only those who get in the top 50% of grades can stay?"  It's hard to say, as a world based on Aristocracy is an asinine one.  Basing a person on who their parents were and who their parents were is a broken system.  However, people love to be seen as elite, and some people will do anything in their power to appear more elite.  Some will say, "well, my family rode in on the Mayflower, so I'm superior."  But what really matters is you. 

Conventional wisdom generally is best ignored.  When a person looks at the world, they find that reality is conventional wisdom turned on its head.  Alternative ways of thinking are never popular, but throughout history, conventional ways of thinking have been disproven over and over again.  Perhaps it is time we disprove the current model of higher education.