Why is university education today so broken?

In the Middle Ages, it was profoundly different — it was less about acquiring skills, and more about the process of thinking itself.

If you went to university back then, you learned the 7 liberal arts...

Ancient and medieval societies had a vastly different idea of what higher education should be. It wasn't about readiness for work, but cultivation of the moral and intellectual virtues that free the mind.

From the 12th century, a standard university course consisted of 7 liberal arts: 3 humanities (the trivium) and 4 sciences (the quadrivium). These weren't exactly “subjects” as we understand them, but modes of learning.

What was "liberal" about them? They were the kind of thing studied by free men, as opposed to strictly practical education (cooking, agriculture, toolmaking, etc.) for servī, "slaves."

"Free men" were able to gain knowledge that wasn't for a pre-defined purpose, but instead to transform them personally. Music was studied not for its practical applications, but for its effects in purifying the soul.

A medieval university course first taught you the trivium: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric. These were tools for later learning; to free your mind first so that you can think. And since all knowledge is conveyed through language, you must learn that first.

First, Grammar is the mechanics of language. It taught you language in the basic sense: how to comprehend and convey ideas — so you studied the greatest works/ideas from history, like Virgil's Aeneid.

Dialectic (logic) is the mechanics of thought: how to compose sound arguments and identify wrong ones. You'd study Porphyry's introduction to Aristotle's logical works.

Rhetoric is using language to instruct or persuade. Knowledge (grammar), now understood through logic, can be passed onward as wisdom. You'd likely study Cicero's great dialogue, De Orate…

After that, you're ready for the quadrivium: Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. Why were they grouped as sciences? Because ancient thinkers understood the universe as bound by a mathematical, musical harmony.

You'd read Euclid's Elements, Plato's Timaeus, and Boethius's De Musica to understand the properties of numbers, shapes and the cosmic order — and how mathematics connects us to the universal music of the cosmos.

After all this, your mind was finally ready for philosophy and the higher faculties: law, medicine, and theology. Theology was considered the highest, and studying it would culminate a complete Christian education.

The key difference back then was to see education not simply as a set of disciplines to gain factual knowledge from. Subjects instead worked together on a journey to free the mind, preparing it above all in the process of thinking.

Only once you'd completed the 7 liberal arts (6-8 years) could you move on to higher faculties. So no matter what people went on to do, their minds had all been trained in the same rigorous basics of thought.

6-8 years may seem long, but university education back then typically started around 14-16 years of age. Besides, Plato believed students ought not to be taught philosophy until the age of 30:

For a young man is a sort of puppy who only plays with an argument; and is reasoned into and out of his opinions every day; he soon begins to believe nothing.