This is not exactly “close down the universities” material, but it is a good presentation of some of the things wrong with the modern degree machine universities. A professor laments about the decline in wisdom, the attainment of a comprehensive body of knowledge, which digested helps one live well and make sound policy decisions. That quality has fled in the modern university:
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/02/how-a-generation-lost-its-common-culture/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TiAEHjM5ZM
“My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture. Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West."
This deals simply with the collapse of traditional learning and the preservation of Western civilisation. However, I think that that is old news. Much of the university is devoted to actively destroying traditional values and burying the West, while the academics are well paid and well fed. I have written numerous articles on this theme. We are long past the conservative lament, and have now entered the killing zone of the apocalypse of the West.