”The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass".
NO!
"College" has come to mean, "The place you go to take courses to become employable". The problem is, the employment deals with business involving products we don't produce; we've become a service economy with no production of material goods to speak of. We service those who produce what we need, but, in the process become subservient to the producers of those goods.
Does this, as feebly described, ring any bells, re the rise and fall of the Roman Empire?