All this talk about the gutting of the core curriculum and the profanation of the liberal arts is fine and dandy, and the College Guide certainly provides a detailed account of the devolution of the curricula at top universities in the US, but I don't quite understand WHY this has happened. Is it simply that the educated in the US are heavily predominantly left-wing? Is there some quality inherent in the university or the study of liberal arts that lends itself to this process of devolution? Is it simply that the vast increase in the number of students attending college has verified the maxim "few can reason, all can feel?" How could higher education devolve so rapidly in a mere 50 years?

Perhaps a question for another day is what the ramifications of this devlotuion are on the future of the US. Given that our current system is the product of the system 30-60 years ago, how bad will the system be 30-60 years from now?

Well, you'd partly look to the success of such devolution as an answer. Brown's Open Curriculum reflected quite well upon the institution, for instance.

Think of it in free market terms; people want what they're selling.

I don't buy "people want what they're selling." Basically, you seem to be assuming causation based on a correlation, with no other evidence than the correlation. "A lot of liberal arts colleges have stopped teaching a classic core curriculum. There has at the same time been a big increase in the number of families shelling out a lot of dough for liberal arts degress. Therefore, the increase in demand for liberal arts degrees must be caused by the change in curriculum." Not good logic.

As far as I can see, the timeline of decline of the core curriculum has paralleled the huge increase in the number of students attending college. One can, I think, reasonably assume that a 100% increase in the number of students attending college from one generation to the next means that a lot of new students come from families with no college education; thus, the "buyers" (parents) of many wouldn't know the difference between the core curriculum and banana pudding. Even today I find an incredible number of parents have no idea what their children's curriculum is all about, and don't care. The "they want what they're selling" argument would make more sense, perhaps, if we were talking about particular trades, like engineering or business, where the benefits of the degree are more easily and immediately measured.

Now, saying that the change in curriculum reflected well on the university is a little different. That's more of a, "the universities did it so their intellectuals could tell each other how intellectual they were" argument. Is this the problem? Is ideology really that pervasive amongst our intellegentsia? Seems like a deeply unsatisfying answer, but I suppose a plausible one.