American higher education is sick, especially in the social sciences & the humanities, the subjects that are needed to give direction and moral guidance to the natural & physical sciences. Today the graduate schools are obsessed with “research” ….. which is irrelevant to what the vast majority exposed to it will be doing for the rest of their lives. It does not touch upon real life, management, interpersonal relations, or teaching. Instead it concentrates on the production of “research papers” of which 99 percent have little relevance to the field concerned or are unnecessary in terms of the subject itself. But the production of such papers is the entrance to the profession, and to promotion within it.
http://www.carrollquigley.net/book-reviews/behind_the_sickness_in_higher_education.htm (Edited)

Epicurus might have said that the business of education is to encourage students to think for themselves and to learn how to learn – for the rest of their lives. It cannot be sensible to encourage graduates to conduct obscure research that leads nowhere, instead of being in front of students and challenging them.