The truth is like a flounder.

Yes it is.  You kick it under the table and ignore it long enough, it'll start to STINK.

Case in point:  University!

In their forthcoming book Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis, Prof. Côté and his co-author, Anton Allahar, sound the alarm about the demise of higher education, where many students are more interested in the piece of paper they get at the end of their programs than in the intellectual journey along the way, where professors are cowed into watering down courses and bumping up grades, and where universities are run like corporations hawking mass-produced degrees which are increasingly in demand but increasingly meaningless.

The consequences, the authors argue, are a disengaged student body, disillusioned faculty and a glut of bachelor-degree-holding graduates with unrealistically lofty aspirations in for a shock when they land in a job market fuelled by "credentialism" and plagued by under-employment.

Credentialism!  This is what you get when people are assumed to be incompetent morons unless proven otherwise.  Doesn't matter a damn if you can DO the job, you have to have the right paperwork. 

Kids are preparing for the workplace the best way they can.  They sleep through the indoctrination, browbeat the gatekeepers into punching the damn ticket and get the hell out ASAP.  That they don't know anything and can't do anything is irrelevant so long as they got the ticket!  If they schmooze well they can parlay their incompetence into a pretty decent sinecure in one of the many layers of public or corporate bureaucracy modern life is infested with.  Kids learn early that the system rewards popularity, not ability.

Problem is this credential madness leads to poor performance in corporations and government.   Guys have the ticket, they look good in the suit and they can bafflegab with the best of 'em, but they can't do the friggin' job.  Leading to countries like China eating our lunch.

That'd be the bad smell from kicking truth under the table too much.

The Smelly Phantom