Stop worrying about the drinking aspect of school. Socializing/networking is one of the golden nuggets of academia, the orgs and clubs really do improve the quality of life and experience of everything else. Just because you're not into it doesn't make it detrimental.
Otherwise, the ecosystem is decent, it's all about profit and marketing in the age where you can be self taught and many are complacent of having trades because bachelor's don't really offer much in terms of salary for some. Intl. students still strive a d see the merit in education/academia's quality but:
1. Raise the wages of professors/teachers
2. Give the athletes salaries
3. Reduce the inflation of job market qualifications
*4. Make higher Ed. Free (in NA+)
If they don't solve these things, then yeah you might see lower admission rates + quality of students' work.
What global security? The military has done more harm than good and the reason no one fights back is because of how mighty it is and the IMF. Look at Afghanistan and Iraq, did it leave it better off? Or its influence in Latin America. How's it's going in Ukraine, other than selling weapons? You don't want the US to "protect" you.
Wow, Israeli's spying on their main sponsor?? Espionage is part of the political territory but hopefully this sets precedent to a change of optics. (Which probably not since Russia does it boldly for fun at this point).
>Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary, categorical view of issues instead of looking at each issue as something with its own set of properties to explore.
I would slightly disagree. Americans are typically very moderate and I believe made to not understand the concepts of politics, when there's capitalism and liberalism involved it's just too complex to understand. The biggest and obviously evidence of this is the apathy toward voting, why even be engaged in something that isn't felt to be a democratic system? How many feel marginalized and the kinds of communities that say so. As impacftul Assange's work may be, the shakers and movers of the world are doing a good job at damage control sounds like.