This reads like a radical anti-egalitarian manifesto by some young, smart but inexperienced Internet-based firebrand. Wikipedia is way cool! Universities are dead institutions walking! We’ll all learn off the web! Social networks will replace campuses! You know the sort of thing.
Then I got to the end and my jaw dropped when I saw what the author does for a living. Try to read the article without skipping to the end, scrolling down carefully without jumping ahead, it’s worth it.
So. What do we do to distinguish experts from non-experts when we no longer even have credentials as a marker of expertise? (e.g. there’s not a vast reserve of commercial positions for pure philosophers.)
I wonder if Lord Browne has heard about this yet.