Books are a finite resource, but not really limited for any practical purposes at least in the US. Used books are inexpensive, libraries are readily available, most things out of copyright are available online, etc.

Education is following as similar course. Things like MITs open courseware, edX, etc. are making it increasingly easy to get the educational content from top teachers regardless of how limited these teachers are.

(Having access to an education is not the same as actually getting a degree, and getting a degree isn't always the same as getting an education.)

But there has probably never been a time in history where more people had free or inexpensive access to the top educational content in the world.

Education content is definitely ample now, including text books and references. we even have great communities to get answers to our questions. Unfortunately the bottleneck of education just switched to access to good teachers. A good teacher inspires students, identifies exactly why each student has difficulty understanding something, explains intuitions behind the most difficult concepts, designs highly tailored homework, leads engaging seminars, and keeps students in their discomfort zone. As in STEM field in general, lab staff, equipments, chemical agents, lab materials are generally scarce resources too.

I understand what you are saying, but I would argue that lack of access to teacher is less of a bottleneck than drive, desire, and motivation. A motivated individual is going to have no trouble finding what they need to learn and places to ask questions for things they don't understand.

I see where you are coming from on access to labs, chemicals, and equipment. But someone who has fully availed themselves of everything they can learn from free/inexpensive online classes, books, forums, emailing people, etc. is headed on a path where they have a high probability of getting access to those types of things once that is the only thing blocking their continued education.

I don’t disagree with you. I just think “drive, desire, and motivation” is part of one’s talent. The progressive policies will not hurt the best students because they students will find their resources anyway. It is the middle, the vast majority like me, who would get hurt. They would think that they got good education, and then realize that their understanding of maths is so shitty that they can’t even pass city college’s dead simple placement test. Oh, I didn’t make this up, either. NYT reported this miserable experience of a straight A student, and I was shocked to read it.

Link, please?

> Saying everyone should go to MIT

Not suggesting that, and it's wrong anyways: the point here is that we, as a society, want people to have a basic floor of an education by the time they reach adulthood. Not necessarily MIT, but not nothing either, and the track I was on for a bit in my childhood was closer to "nothing" than it was to "decent", and it was certainly way off course if I were to shoot for MIT.

For the students that never left that track… I cannot imagine that school did much, if anything, to produce a citizen with a high-school education.