| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Why Pay $100,000?
00:05:44
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| At some colleges now, the New York Times has this article, and it is about, it begins with Vanderbilt University. | |
| $100,000. | |
| Why would you pay it? | |
| That is the question. | |
| Why would people pay it? | |
| I mean, I don't understand why you would pay $50,000, to be honest. | |
| Do I hear $25,000? | |
| Yes, exactly. | |
| Now, you know, you have no choice in certain subjects. | |
| You have to go through college. | |
| I have said this for so many years. | |
| I've had the same view of colleges. | |
| The answer to what college your kid should go to has always been the cheapest one you can afford. | |
| The cheapest one. | |
| That's it. | |
| Does anybody care? | |
| Do you know that the only question never asked to me that I could think of, whether it's after a speech or in my fireside chat or on the radio for 40 years, I have been asked about my family. | |
| I have been asked about all private things. | |
| Nobody has ever asked me in 40 years what college did you go to. | |
| That is how insignificant it is as life goes on. | |
| You are judged on your abilities. | |
| What can you do? | |
| Increasingly, it doesn't even matter if you went to college. | |
| There's a part of me that wishes I had not gone to college so I could say that, you know? | |
| Yeah. | |
| But you should still read my Bible commentary. | |
| It's accessible but highly intellectual, in part thanks to my knowledge of Hebrew language and grammar. | |
| Some colleges will soon charge $100,000 a year. | |
| Some Vanderbilt students will have $100,000 in total expenses for the 2024-2025 school year. | |
| The school really doesn't want to talk about it. | |
| That's the New York Times. | |
| It was truly only a matter of time before a college would have the nerve to quote its cost of attendance at nearly $100,000 a year. | |
| This spring, we're catching our first glimpse of it. | |
| What is astonishing is people are more suspicious of colleges worth now than in any time in my lifetime. | |
| You would think that they would want to lower their costs. | |
| The eye-popping sub is not an anomaly. | |
| Only a tiny fraction of college-going students will pay anything close. | |
| But a few dozen other colleges and universities that reject the vast majority of applicants will probably arrive at this threshold within a few years. | |
| How did this happen and can it possibly be worth it? | |
| Well... | |
| So if you hear a student is at Harvard today, I don't know the answer to the question I'm about to pose, but I am very curious. | |
| You might want to call in on this. | |
| If you hear that somebody's son or daughter is at Harvard, do you have the same assumption about their abilities and quality and prestige as you did? | |
| A few years ago. | |
| What do you think the answer is? | |
| I'm ambivalent. | |
| I don't know the answer. | |
| Three months ago I would have said that it has really lost its prestige. | |
| Or much of it. | |
| I can't say all of it. | |
| But it is going to happen, especially in light of the fact that these colleges Are not taking the academically best students. | |
| Because then they end up with too many Asians and Jews. | |
| They're virtually open about it. | |
| That would be like the NBA saying, you know, we don't want too many blacks playing basketball. | |
| It is a wonder that people are not challenged on that. | |
| Do you believe in merit or do you not believe in merit? | |
| And if you believe in merit, why doesn't it apply to sports? | |
| Wow. | |
| At a few small liberal arts colleges with enormous endowments, even $100,000 would not cover the average cost of educating a student according to the schools. | |
| How is that possible? | |
| Let's see, $100,000. | |
|
A Million Students?
00:01:23
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| How many students do they take in per year? | |
| A thousand? | |
| Right, a thousand at least in most of these colleges, no? | |
| I mean at Princeton, Yale. | |
| I'm talking about the Berkeley, probably a few thousand. | |
| So what's a thousand times a hundred thousand? | |
| Ten times a hundred thousand is a million. | |
| So $100 is $10 million, and $1,000 is $100 million? | |
| Is that right? | |
| Yeah, I guess that's right. | |
| Does that sound right? | |
| We don't do anything on the show. | |
| We don't do math on this show. | |
| That doesn't cover things? | |
| Please, seriously, I think I did it correctly, but go into, what do you call it, the calculator. | |
| So do a thousand times a hundred thousand. | |
| It doesn't cover the costs. | |
| It doesn't cover, if it doesn't cover the costs, because so many people are hired not to teach. | |
| They're DEI administrators. | |
| Diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators. | |