At least in the Anglosphere, elite colleges were elite finishing schools before they were tickets to middle class elite jobs. I'm not sure that they are degenerating in the way that you imply.
It's also not clear to me that academic pursuits are somehow better than commercial pursuits. They're certainly not better for society.
> Very few people actually are interested in doing math or math derived work all the time, but if they don't society and the jobs market will be unmerciful.
I feel like I know more people who are interested in doing math, but are not doing math because the job market is not kind to those who do math. Indeed I am one of those people. I do agree that I took a somewhat cynical approach.
Replacing math with CS would make more sense in the context of the conversation. There are many 18 year olds today who are saying "I guess I'll study computer science".
When I took the first semester CS course at my alma mater the class size was roughly 300 students. Now it's regularly 1200+.
This was fine in America for a long time, but
1) As colleges degenerate from being an intellectual addition, to a pre requisite for jobs well paying or not
2) several classes of jobs disappear, especially those which could be done by common sense and training
It results in posers. People who are high functioning, cynical and clear about what it takes to live a decent life.
I probably point it out a lot on HN and other places - but you see this in action in India and China (and other developing nations).
Very few people actually are interested in doing math or math derived work all the time, but if they don't society and the jobs market will be unmerciful.
So they pretend. They hate it, assume everyone else is pretending, and go through the basic motions required to get to the other side.
These are the people who are badly affected by the whole process. The ones who would not have been happy becoming engineers, lawyers or olympiads.
But that's the game, and people will always play it.