"tell me why all those professors we paid millions of dollars to study economics couldn't provide a convincing rebuttal to that ideology in advance of the crash."
Because many business and economics professors, esp. the prominent ones, make the majority of their income from consulting fees and by serving on boards of large corporations.
For example Frederic Mishkin a professor at Columbia Business School and a former member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors authored a paper titled "Financial Stability In Iceland" shortly before the countries economy imploded from a credit bubble. As it turns out he was paid $124,000 to write it by the Icelandic chamber of commerce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Mishkin
This and many similar examples are detailed in the documentary "Inside Job", though, it isn't something you hear about in the news much if at all.
In other words the study of business and economics has been corrupted by corporate money.
I don't think you're actually disagreeing, because I think the entire point of the piece was to highlight the discrepancy between the putatively educated meritocracy and the fact that they have in fact not produced all that much merit. I think the "Meritocracy" in the title is intended to be subtly ironic. I think you're supposed to read this and then kvetch about how the meritocracy isn't.
I could copy and paste this as a reply to a number of other people complaining about how misinformed this piece is, then going on to argue in the comment about how the meritocracy isn't. This piece is a fine bit of judo, getting a whole bunch of people who probably would otherwise be defending the dominant educational culture to condemn it, by its own standards.
Because many business and economics professors, esp. the prominent ones, make the majority of their income from consulting fees and by serving on boards of large corporations.
For example Frederic Mishkin a professor at Columbia Business School and a former member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors authored a paper titled "Financial Stability In Iceland" shortly before the countries economy imploded from a credit bubble. As it turns out he was paid $124,000 to write it by the Icelandic chamber of commerce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Mishkin
This and many similar examples are detailed in the documentary "Inside Job", though, it isn't something you hear about in the news much if at all.
In other words the study of business and economics has been corrupted by corporate money.