The roots of the problem

I watched a speech given by an education expert the other day and he came to the *surprising* conclusion that we need to improve higher education.
He pointed out that students need to graduate with two crucial skills: 1. the ability to think logically, critically and creatively and 2. the ability to empathise and have "humanistic" values.

My argument is that these are impossible goals.  I'm not saying that it's impossible for students to graduate with these skills, but I am saying that these goals are not possible for universities to achieve on their own. 

Here's why: all through primary and high school, students learn two very important things we they will not magically UN-learn when they get to university.

The first is that your work has no value.  You write for the teacher and the teacher is your judge, jury and executioner.  No-one else will read what you've written or benefit from it in any way.  Therefore, your goal is not to produce well-reasoned, creative, analytical arguments, but rather to give the kind of answer your teacher wants.  Critical thinking, logic and creativity are only important when the final product matters beyond a grade.

The second is that you are graded individually.  This means that you do not want to work in groups because the slowest student might bring your grade down.  Indeed, this is a common teacher complaint: "I don't know how to grade group work; and even if I put them in groups, they'll just divide up the work rather than truly working together."  The kids are right.  I don't want to be responsible for someone else's shoddy work, so it's easier if I just do my bit.  The problem of course is that working individually you never get to develop the skills of communication, empathy and collaboration.  This is important: the best projects aren't being made by stars anymore.  Think of wikipedia and other crowdsourced projects: nobody puts their name and the total is far greater than the sum of its parts.

In other words, the students who enter university, especially the "good" ones, are coming in with precisely the opposite values of those we want to teach; and the "better" the student, the deeper ingrained these values are!