It's gripping. I lectured in five Universities this side of the Atlantic so can report with some confidence that the system is ripe for abuse like this. Teaching has become secondary to research in prestige and supplementary income, so neither the quality of the teaching nor establishing a relationship with students is valued by the intitutions. However, they are also funded for student admissions and retention so it suits the instituiton to pass students at exam boards rather than fail them.
Few teaching staff get to know students well enough to care if they are really understanding or not, students are not receiving help to learn study or writing skills, but at the same time 'education' as it is still called is currency for a career. So turning to the shadow scholar makes perfect economic sense, especially, as he says, for the intellectually or linguistically challenged or the lazy rich.
Needless to say it is tragic for the progress of the human race because these graduates going through have learned very little in terms of intellectual progress or self knowledge, but plenty about working the system. Its not all bad news in universities of course , but the system has become far too shallow, cynical and (don't get me started) corrupt. - Or is that just me going off on a rant again?.
