> What's the evidence that libraries serve the poor more than universities?
I take it you've agreed universities are skewed towards the middle class and higher in terms of direct enrollment (and this is easily verifiable). To counter this, you talked about indirect effects:
> Maybe serving the middle class by producing a highly qualified workforce eventually helps the poor more than just throwing money at libraries.
How can you prove this? I don't think it's possible, but if you can I'm all ears.
> Are you seriously claiming that university tuition is being increased simply to fund "questionable research" etc.?
I'm claiming one of the reasons university tuition is being increased is that we're in an environment where degrees are seen as being necessary, whether or not they are. In other words, degrees are being treated as an inelastic good. Therefore students are willing to pay whatever they can afford. As student loan limits increase, what students can afford to pay increases, so tuition increases as well. If even part of the tuition increases come from this, and your college president is making $1 million/year, I think it's fair to call that waste.
> This is a product of the economic system we live and I fail to see how reducing university funding will solve this problem.
It's a product of the system we live in because we created and subsidized that system. Lowering the subsidy is the first step to solving the problem. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3608680
> You said people can't do anything of value without a college degree
This is completely false. I did not say anything of the kind. In fact, I'm making the exact opposite point, so now I'm wondering if you understood what I was saying at all. I said universities are "fostering an environment where people are expected to have degrees before they can do anything of value".
> yummyfajita's claim, if valid, is a much weaker one than yours.
yummyfajitas directly counters the same claim I was referring to.
> That's not what I'm claiming.
No, that is exactly what you claimed. You said, word-for-word, that it "would've been impossible [for me to publish the article] without all the academic research into computing and networking systems in the last few decades".
> If you want to claim all of this research could have been done in some different setting
Yes, I'm claiming there is more than one way to do research. Your claim, that what was done was the only possible way to do it, is extraordinary to me. And again, that is what you're claiming when you say it "would've been impossible" for me to publish an article on the internet.
yummyfajitas directly counters the same claim I was referring to.
No, that is exactly what you claimed. You said, word-for-word, that it "would've been impossible [for me to publish the article] without all the academic research into computing and networking systems in the last few decades". Yes, I'm claiming there is more than one way to do research. Your claim, that what was done was the only possible way to do it, is extraordinary to me. And again, that is what you're claiming when you say it "would've been impossible" for me to publish an article on the internet.