Ouroboros Snake and the Stilted Institution of Academe

My initial reaction to being instructed in how to use public information databases  (wikipedia, google, etc.) involved a bit of awe and a bit of anger. Awe at the manifold different ways one can use these technologies to not only easily access good information, but in the ways in which they can assist in the production of new knowledge or in providing a valid context for further research. My anger was rooted in having spent 4 years on my undergraduate degree plus another 2 years in postgraduate work, only to discover that my methods of research had become completely outmoded--that the entire business (because it is certainly a business) of higher education has fully isolated itself inside its own cloistered libraries, unwilling to share knowledge with anyone unwilling to fork over the necessary cash every semester for the privilege of being lectured in the sacred literary arts.

Google and wikipedia have created an environment in which everyone willing to do the clever work of sifting through mountains of information can become an autodidact in nearly any subject. So why would one pay for college? Credentials. Most students (and I can speak with some experience on this subject) are far more capable of becoming experts in a given field than are the professors teaching it. They just understand the mechanisms and can aggregate information more efficiently than the previous generation. This is not to say that PhDs don't have valuable information to contribute (they generally create the content that their students must aggregate), but their role is not one premised on collaborative multifunctionality. Professors are endowed only with credentials and experience. Students today don't need the same credentials because the jobs for which they prepare them will almost certainly not exist by the time they reach job-seeking age. This is the process by which academe remains an institution premised upon non-inclusion. As an institution, it's the ouroboros--it produces young academics only so they may train to become old academics who are only trained to further produce young academics. It's a stilted institution.

The really interesting thing about these new information communications technologies is the ways in which it has democratized information. Whereas previously, one could only contribute to academe through a lot of money either in scholarship or at great personal expense, the world has opened up. What needs to catch up now is the educational models that have been in place to produce "academics" (I use this term in the strictly narrowest sense as a stand-in for "dilettante-with-a-bachelors-in-the-liberal-arts"). Personally, I find this notion tremendously exciting. I am eager to learn how to best teach students whose worldview and cognitive makeup is so drastically different from my own. I'm further eager to be a kind of intermediary between these students and the teachers who aim to serve them, yet cannot understand why a student would consult wikipedia before driving to the public library. 

EDIT: Forgot to include the link to my comment4kids contribution

https://www.writeabout.com/2017/03/should-everyone-get-a-trophy/#comment-192631