It's great when you're a wealthy noble and have time to do luxury things.

For almost all of history, higher education has been a luxury good for the rich, including the Greek city states. There have been a few exceptions, most notably European countries with tax funded schools, but even those are primarily pumping out degrees used for chasing jobs.

The point of modernity was to broaden access and opportunity for everyone, not just the rich.

What we got instead was a regression to aristocracy, where critical social resources of all kinds were enclosed and captured by capital and financialisation.

The result is a lot of very broken systems, education being just one.

Universities became primarily about administration of property and income, and the educational element has become a form of marketing to attract money (and bodies) so the rest could function.

And now we're on the edge of the next stage, which isn't "What is education for?" but "What are humans for?"

We used to know. Or at least we used to believe we knew.

Now we don't any more.