Dennis Prager Show - Did You Pay 100k To Go To College?
Aired: 2024-04-19
Duration: 06:53


=== Why Pay $100,000? (05:44) ===

[00:00:00]  At some colleges now, the New York Times has this article, and it is about, it begins with Vanderbilt University.
[00:00:14]  $100,000.
[00:00:17]  Why would you pay it?
[00:00:20]  That is the question.
[00:00:23]  Why would people pay it?
[00:00:27]  I mean, I don't understand why you would pay $50,000, to be honest.
[00:00:33]  Do I hear $25,000?
[00:00:36]  Yes, exactly.
[00:00:39]  Now, you know, you have no choice in certain subjects.
[00:00:42]  You have to go through college.
[00:00:45]  I have said this for so many years.
[00:00:48]  I've had the same view of colleges.
[00:00:53]  The answer to what college your kid should go to has always been the cheapest one you can afford.
[00:01:01]  The cheapest one.
[00:01:03]  That's it.
[00:01:05]  Does anybody care?
[00:01:10]  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.
[00:01:25]  I have been asked about all private things.
[00:01:30]  Nobody has ever asked me in 40 years what college did you go to.
[00:01:36]  That is how insignificant it is as life goes on.
[00:01:41]  You are judged on your abilities.
[00:01:44]  What can you do?
[00:01:50]  Increasingly, it doesn't even matter if you went to college.
[00:01:55]  There's a part of me that wishes I had not gone to college so I could say that, you know?
[00:02:00]  Yeah.
[00:02:01]  But you should still read my Bible commentary.
[00:02:06]  It's accessible but highly intellectual, in part thanks to my knowledge of Hebrew language and grammar.
[00:02:16]  Some colleges will soon charge $100,000 a year.
[00:02:20]  Some Vanderbilt students will have $100,000 in total expenses for the 2024-2025 school year.
[00:02:30]  The school really doesn't want to talk about it.
[00:02:32]  That's the New York Times.
[00:02:36]  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.
[00:02:46]  This spring, we're catching our first glimpse of it.
[00:02:49]  What is astonishing is people are more suspicious of colleges worth now than in any time in my lifetime.
[00:02:59]  You would think that they would want to lower their costs.
[00:03:06]  The eye-popping sub is not an anomaly.
[00:03:09]  Only a tiny fraction of college-going students will pay anything close.
[00:03:15]  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.
[00:03:27]  How did this happen and can it possibly be worth it?
[00:03:33]  Well...
[00:03:36]  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.
[00:03:45]  You might want to call in on this.
[00:03:49]  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?
[00:04:05]  A few years ago.
[00:04:07]  What do you think the answer is?
[00:04:10]  I'm ambivalent.
[00:04:11]  I don't know the answer.
[00:04:14]  Three months ago I would have said that it has really lost its prestige.
[00:04:20]  Or much of it.
[00:04:21]  I can't say all of it.
[00:04:26]  But it is going to happen, especially in light of the fact that these colleges Are not taking the academically best students.
[00:04:39]  Because then they end up with too many Asians and Jews.
[00:04:42]  They're virtually open about it.
[00:04:47]  That would be like the NBA saying, you know, we don't want too many blacks playing basketball.
[00:04:57]  It is a wonder that people are not challenged on that.
[00:05:01]  Do you believe in merit or do you not believe in merit?
[00:05:05]  And if you believe in merit, why doesn't it apply to sports?
[00:05:12]  Wow.
[00:05:15]  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.
[00:05:24]  How is that possible?
[00:05:27]  Let's see, $100,000.

=== A Million Students? (01:23) ===

[00:05:31]  How many students do they take in per year?
[00:05:33]  A thousand?
[00:05:34]  Right, a thousand at least in most of these colleges, no?
[00:05:41]  I mean at Princeton, Yale.
[00:05:42]  I'm talking about the Berkeley, probably a few thousand.
[00:05:50]  So what's a thousand times a hundred thousand?
[00:05:55]  Ten times a hundred thousand is a million.
[00:05:58]  So $100 is $10 million, and $1,000 is $100 million?
[00:06:06]  Is that right?
[00:06:07]  Yeah, I guess that's right.
[00:06:08]  Does that sound right?
[00:06:09]  We don't do anything on the show.
[00:06:13]  We don't do math on this show.
[00:06:15]  That doesn't cover things?
[00:06:27]  Please, seriously, I think I did it correctly, but go into, what do you call it, the calculator.
[00:06:34]  So do a thousand times a hundred thousand.
[00:06:38]  It doesn't cover the costs.
[00:06:40]  It doesn't cover, if it doesn't cover the costs, because so many people are hired not to teach.
[00:06:46]  They're DEI administrators.
[00:06:50]  Diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators.