The root problem is simple to define -- The assumption that professors have been able to make, historically, is that university students are there because they are motivated. With everyone going to college, that is no longer the case.
Students are there because society at large has demanded that they be there. A college degree has transformed from a certificate of achievement into a proof of purchase that HR departments must validate in exchange for an offer of employment. The Universities are only too happy to play along with the charade as they hoover up increasingly absurd tuitions. The increase in tuition is yet another bubble being driven by "too big to fail" banks, this time saddling what are for all intents and purposes children with crippling lifelong debt which is conveniently immune from bankruptcy protection. Sometime soon the music will stop and all that's left is to find out who's going to be left without a chair. One thing that the previous bubble should have taught us is that it won't be the banks who are left holding the bag, which means it's between the universities and the students.
If I was running a University right now, I'd be very worried. The many and sundry administrators in particular should be asking themselves what's going to happen when universities suddenly find themselves in the position of having to cut their budgets by 50% or more of their current levels due to the sudden lack student financing options and the inability of students to pay even a fraction of current tuition levels. For that matter the worth or need of a degree in a great many fields will likely be called into question quite soon.
The universities are top heavy with "Associate Vice Provost of Faculty Diversity" and other such bullshit admin pukes pulling down $300K per year for made up jobs, while the actual teaching is done by adjuncts who get literally raped by the universities who pay them a couple thousand dollars a course and cobble together a handful of courses to teach to break into the five figure salary range without health insurance or benefits. It's a travesty.
