Is College A Scam?

The woman sitting behind me on the train kept saying into her phone, “he was obsessed with talking about my vagina. Is that weird?”

I was trying to listen to her conversation. But now her voice was lower. “Should I feel guilty about what I did?” she was saying. I really wanted to know what she did.

Anyway.

At that moment, I was going into the city to give a talk about college education to an audience of about 150 education experts.

I’m an expert because I wrote a book.

The speakers were me, some professor, some head of tuitions at some shit school (i.e. the one I graduated from), the NYC Chancellor of something (I got there late and everyone just kept referring to him as “The Chancellor” so I’m not sure what he was Emperor of or whatever).

My topic: why they had all wasted their time, money, and lives on going to college.

I told a lot of jokes during my talk.

I have an excellent preparation technique: While other people were giving their talks I had been downstairs watching “Louis CK” on my phone. I like to prepare for a talk by laughing.

Then it was my turn to speak upstairs. I got everybody to laugh quite a bit.

But the bottom line is: the system is broken, the middle class is disappearing, being carved through the middle by a trillion dollars in student loan debt, and everyone is still raising tuition faster than inflation. And 50% of kids with college degrees now are underemployed.

And that one statistic that “if you go to college you make a million dollars more” is totally flawed and I explained why using basic Statistics 101 knowledge (explained in detail in this post).

I also talked about the people I met when I wandered around NYU interviewing students about how they were going to handle their student loan debt.

I talked about the girl who was practically naked while hula hooping so she could make debt payments from a tip jar. I spoke about the two kids who got degrees but were now clerks in an eyeglass store getting paid by the hour, and they felt they were “lucky” because most of their other friends did not have jobs.

And I told my story of how I spent 3 years studying computers then 2 years in grad school for computers then had to take remedial computer classes once I got a job.

The woman who spoke immediately after me, a computer professor from the shit school I graduated from, said, “well James went to our college and was successful so it couldn’t be all that bad.”

And everyone laughed and clapped.

The rest of her talk was about some bullshit called MOOCs. A way for people to pay colleges lots of money while not paying attention to anything.

The Chancellor of Whatever spoke at one point and said I was “idiotic”.

The woman after that was in charge of tuitions at same college. She said “Tutions will always go up faster than inflation.” She said, “We have to be able to hire competitive researchers”.

I leaned over to Claudia while continuing my game of backgammon on my phone and said, “she forgot to say the word ‘educators’ “.

Later, during the Q&A, one woman asked: “I need to get a masters in education to teach but it costs the same as an MBA. That doesn’t seem fair. What should I do?”

Nobody had an answer for her. I had an answer but felt shy about saying it. My answer was: “You have to quit your job as a teacher.” That’s the only way to let them know this is a problem. Reduce supply. Your value goes up. Then you can dictate the rules of the universe.

Another question. This one for me. “What about that statistic that says you make a million dollars more if you go to college.” I said, “Please refer to the talk I just gave.” He had a follow up, “So are you saying the system is broken?”

That’s a good question. Yes, it’s broken. But the beauty of everything is all life is broken and waiting for us to tinker with it and fix it. I love that everything is broken.

What will the world look like once everything is “fixed”?

“I don’t know,” I said.

Another woman said, “My kids are in the same ‘zone’ as kids in the projects…so obviously it’s not an option for my kids to be schooled with those kids. What should I do?”

Her husband was a professor at Columbia. “Me and my husband” met at “an ivy league institution”. Nobody had an answer for her.

I had an answer for her. But I didn’t say it.

After the talk people would sort of bump into me and whisper, “I agree with everything you said,” but then disappear before I could turn and say thank you.

Claudia said, “Let’s go.” But I was feeling hesitant. I wanted people to tell me how funny my jokes were.

Claudia said, “NOW!”

We left. In the cab Claudia said, “Now WHAT was THAT all about? Her kids had to go to school with kids in the projects?”

But here I am a few days later and I’m still thinking about the professor who made the joke, “Well James was successful so clearly college benefited him.”

Why did she need to get people to laugh at me?

The button holding my last pair of pants together just fell off. The threads frayed away. The button fell to the ground. The bottoms of my pants are all chewed up.

I’ve successfully run out of all of my pants.

When they write the history of the universe this will be an important moment.