Here is one good reading of what's at stake in our passive, consumer society today, by Kurt Spellmeyer:

• If culture is where we live, so to speak, if it gives form to our values and extends them into the future, then the promise of democracy remains unrealized so long as most of us are uninvolved in the making of culture itself. (Arts of Living 7)

My quick read, maybe unfair, maybe too gloomy, is that the average university course focuses on replicating expertise within the limits of a single discipline, not on tools for creativity or collaboration, and usually not on interdisciplinary tools either. My quick read is that the university does not entirely support consumer culture but it does not really take it on either, not in its teaching methods. A course reading or lecture might offer an intellectual critique of consumer culture, but the medium by which this message is communicated is still a problem.

• Passivity? You're soaking in it! [Just ask Madge.]