I cannot help wondering if the article understates its case. There are lots of people going to lots of colleges - and the current news suggests that many of those degrees, of whatever level, will never lead to a job. With costs for education advancing faster than inflation, what if we have overcapacity in education, with the risk of a reversion to the mean? We are in the middle of a reversion to the mean in housing - something similar in higher education would be every bit as wrenching to those involved.
There are problems with combining departments, though. The groups very nearly
cannot communicate with each other - not because of attitude, but because of the details of what they work with. Mathematicians have an entirely different language than do Psychology professors. There are entire conceptual territories that a computer scientist understands, but a graduate student in Education does not. Imagine trying to communicate details of Special Forces operations and military life to someone who knew nothing of the terms, and didn't care to learn - the gap would be enormous.
We might also wish to consider that education of students is not where the money is - not for universities, and not for faculty. The key for both are research grants. If a faculty member gets a grant, the university (using a certain large public university as an example) takes about 40% off the top. So the same faculty member that gets paid $90,000 per year might get a $500,000 grant. This would generate $200,000 for the university - well above the revenue generated by 3 ordinary sized-classes. The faculty member could then get "buyouts" using the grant money to not teach, doing research instead. And who decides on the recipients of grants? People who like to examine who published in "prestigious" journals (I'm not making this up...) and want the proposals in a very precise format, with every detail meticulously controlled.
I suspect the underlying problem is that no one has defined what we want education to do. Do we want personal enrichment? If so, then education seems a lot like a luxury. Should the taxpayers support such luxuries? Or, do we want to prepare people for a job? If so, why study history? (This is meant as a good-natured poke at Sigaba, by the way.
). Perhaps we want to educate people such that they become "good citizens", whatever that means - but then we come rather close to indoctrination, I suspect.
Of one thing I am sure. The current oversupply of highly educated people will correct itself in the decades ahead. The transition may involve some redefinitions of our expectations.