Universities at risk

The Economist is worried:
"FIFTY years ago, in the glorious age of three-martini lunches and all-smoking offices, America’s car companies were universally admired. Everybody wanted to know the secrets of their success. How did they churn out dazzling new models every year? How did they manage so many people so successfully (General Motors was then the biggest private-sector employer in the world)? And how did they keep their customers so happy?
Today the world is equally in awe of American universities.
... Could America’s universities go the way of its car companies?
... America’s universities lost their way badly in the era of easy money. If they do not find it again, they may go the way of GM."
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Comment: The Economist misses the essential point. It is not the money which puts US universities at risk. It is rather the same institutional setting that brought down GM: intellectual hybris, a cult of ignorance and a corrupted system of recruitment. Different from the car companies, the matter with universities is much worse. While the US car industry was successfully challenged and the American customer finally got better car despite GM and Ford and Chrysler, this won't happen with education. Not only won't foreign universities enter the US, it is even worse: all over the world countries are imitating the failed American system. Indeed, the two biggest bubble have yet to pop: besides the bond market, it is education, particularly university education.