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.
