Debates From the Archive — Charlie on Why College is a Scam

My name is Charlie Kirk.

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Hi, I was hoping we could talk a little bit more about how you see college as a scam.

Okay, I think we did that, but sure.

If you want to talk about something else, we can talk about something else.

I was just curious.

Okay,

what would you like to pinpoint on that?

Yeah, well, I think a big part of your issue was that people are spending a lot of money and that you feel like they're not getting the equivalent of all the money that they go into debt or that they have to borrow to make it worth it.

Well, in that case, I really, I think education is really awesome.

I think it's really valuable.

I think education is the only way that someone like you is able to write a book is because someone taught you how to read and write.

And education on all levels is great.

So that's not my, that one, I don't think that's your issue with college, right?

Do you know where I went to college?

I don't think that's important right now.

Let me just.

I didn't.

I'm just talking about.

I said read and write, like, who taught you to read and write?

No, I agree.

I didn't say grade school is a scam.

Can we just keep going?

All right.

I said college is a scam, not grade school.

Keep going.

So we're talking about the financial part, right?

So do you think that college should be free then so that everybody can get like a free education?

No.

By the way, what's happening in college is not an education.

Well, okay.

I'm just...

You don't think that college should be free because it's not an education?

If it was...

No.

Wait, wait, wait.

If it was an education in your eyes, would you think that should be free?

What do you mean by free?

You mean paid by somebody else?

Oh, sure, our taxpayer dollars would go to free free.

Oh, okay.

So paid by somebody else?

Sure.

Sure.

No, I don't believe that your schooling should be paid by somebody else.

I want my taxes to go to schooling for everybody.

I think education's great.

I don't want my taxes to go to fund wars.

I don't want my taxes to go to the military or the police budget, but I don't get to go to school.

You don't want any military?

I don't think that it should go to fund the military like that.

I want my taxes.

You don't want any police force?

I want my taxes to go towards education because I think education is valuable.

Do you think that education should be

paid for?

So define education, I'm curious.

Sure, it's just the.

I would probably say that education right now is the ability to go out and learn different mindsets, to be introduced to different subjects, to have the opportunities to talk about these things with a lot of different kinds of people.

I think that's the really cool part about college.

Someone like you can come here and have different opinions.

My history teacher just talked about how he's like,

he does this whole like, I'm a conservative, old school conservative act.

And then one of my other teachers, she's like, I'm a bleeding hippie, you know?

There's like a lot of opportunities to just be introduced to subjects you didn't even know were a thing.

Like, I didn't know that semiotics was a thing until my last philosophy class, and I think that's really interesting.

So just the idea that you get to go out to this place and you get to get taught about a bunch of different ideas.

Are you against that being being available for everyone?

I have a completely different view of what education is.

So, education in Latin means to lead forth.

Okay.

Your idea of education is the new age, which is we're going to have like a buffet line of postmodern ideas, and all ideas are treated the same.

I don't believe that at all.

College means partnership in Greek, and going back to education, you must lead forth towards something.

And I think college should lead you towards the good, the true, and the beautiful.

It should lead you towards things.

You think it should lead towards beautiful things?

Of course.

Like, beautiful things?

Like, you think that we should go out after college and be like, where's the prettiest thing?

If your idea of beauty is just the aesthetic, then you're not having a great college experience.

What's your idea of beauty?

My bad.

Which is perfected in being.

Okay, so you really like the Greek ideas and like the Roman ideas of

the idea of perfection and perfect harmony, because that's like a very Greek and Roman way of thinking.

Well, it's Western, which is the civilization we currently live in.

Okay, but that's

the way you're from Greek and Roman.

Of course, you're right.

So the good, the true, and the beautiful are the three things that every college student should grapple with.

Do you think in this current university that is what you're currently grappling with?

That the focus of your education is enriching yourself to get closer to what is good, what is true, and beautiful?

See, I don't engage with you on the ideas that good, true, and beautiful are something that can be defined and something that can be taught.

You're perfect evidence of why I think college is a scam.

Why do you think?

Wait, I don't.

Because of course they could be defined and they should be sought after.

Okay, so you think that something like the beautiful, the perfect,

like something like goodness can be defined in quantifiable, teachable.

Oh, because you're Christian.

I forgot.

You guys think that there's like a binary teaching?

Well, no,

there's a hierarchy, not a binary.

There's an ultimate perfection.

The ultimate perfection would be that there's a creator who loves you, who made you in his image, and loved you so much to come down and take the broken flesh form, live a perfect life, die and rise from the dead, that you might live forever.

There is nothing more perfect, good, true, or beautiful than that.

Okay, so I don't really engage with religion like that, but what about just the idea that you get to go to a place, you get taught about different subjects, you get the opportunity, okay, I'm sorry, because you don't have access to all these things wherever you come from, you get the opportunity to talk to people who know a lot about these different subjects and get to learn about that.

You don't think that that should be free or like provide.

First of all, I don't think it should be free, and I don't think that's what education should be or what it once was when it was at its best.

What do you think it was at its best?

Because we have like the Indian golden house of, oh no, I think it was called the Baghdad Golden House of Wisdom.

We have the Greek and Roman, and they had their whole thing about how you have to learn astrology at the same time as learning your education.

We have like so many different points of learning and knowledge.

I think people just love to learn.

I think learning is inherent to what we want to do with our lives.

So, so two thoughts.

That is the first line of Aristotle's metaphysics, which is all people seek to know that something within us wants to learn.

So, the answer to when was education at its best?

No, that was your, you were the one who was like, Education is not at their best here.

You're like, this is your new age bull.

It is.

So, but when was it good?

I was about to say that, and you interrupted me again, okay?

My bad.

I'm sorry.

So, it was at its best when we had a thing called classical education here in America, specifically around the American founding.

Classical education has a prioritization on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and the core canon of Greek thinking, which is that there is an abstract, distant good, the logos, which created the world, right?

I want to try to find out more about what that is.

So you think that education should revolve around ethics, then?

You think it should be?

Well, it's a big part of education, yes.

I think that creating good people should be the number one priority of education.

Do you guys think that creating good people is a priority at Cal State Fullerton?

I don't think that that is really a thing that you can achieve

with a pointed.

I don't think there's a way to really teach somebody

being like being a good person is so hard and it involves so many different factors.

I could prove to you that

we're getting a little bit too general with things.

Because the Greeks and the Romans, they were really like,

they had a lot of beliefs, okay?

Plato and Aristotle were not like, let's do the most good.

They were not all in agreement about all these different things.

They had a lot of beliefs.

They had a teacher-student relationship.

But let me ask you a question.

Do you think people would commit commit more crimes or less crimes if they knew that a police officer was watching them at all times?

I don't think this is what we're talking about.

No, no, it's.

No, you said you cannot teach people good.

I'm asking a question.

If somebody thought that somebody was watching their actions, would they behave differently?

I think that people behave differently when people watch them.

Therefore, if society thought that there was a God that was watching all of their actions, would they behave differently?

Do you feel like you behave better when someone is watching that?

Absolutely.

And in fact, I...

So you feel like you can't be good without someone there to abuse.

It's not a matter of you can't be good, it's that you act better if you think that there is somebody watching and judging your actions.

That feels like that fortunate for you because I want to do good because I think it's better for the people around me, not because someone's watching me.

That's like the ideas of the panopticon.

Well, hold on a second.

But if you believe that somebody is always watching your behavior, you'd be less likely to lie, less likely to steal, less likely to cheat.

And this is a good question because you're coming after this in good faith.

Do you think human beings are generally naturally good or generally not so good?

Are we flawed from our birth or are we good or are we a blank slate?

See, you're bringing up these Christian ideas of good again.

I don't think we really come to the same synthesis on what a good person is.

Was Hitler good?

I feel like, again, you're not listening to me.

I feel like we don't come to the same synthesis about what

it is, because for me, I think that something like good is, again, the question of ethics.

It's It's not really a question of education, right?

So you have to decide what's going on.

What people decide for themselves is good is different, right?

So Hitler thought what he was doing was good for his people.

We do not see his actions as good because he was pretty awful to a lot of people.

But when we turn things into an ethical question,

he may see it as doing good for himself and God because, yes, a lot of people believe they are doing good for God, even if that thing is killing people.

Was Hitler doing something objectively wrong?

Which thing are you talking about?

You're talking about the concentration camps.

I don't like the concentration camps, believe it or not.

But hold on, you don't like.

So was that objectively bad?

Objectively bad.

I do think that hurting people is objectively bad.

Okay, so now we're believing in bad.

So then good.

There's a spectrum now.

You said objectively bad.

So you now just said there's a spectrum.

It's not a matter of, well, somebody wanted to do some good for yourself.

No, no, no.

Now there's a spectrum.

Concentration camp, bad.

So then let's get away from that.

How about Mother Teresa?

Good?

Are you talking about her actions and trying to help the poor?

Hundreds of thousands of poor people that were saved in India and Calcutta thanks to her sacrificial work over 30 years.

I don't know Mother Teresa like that, but can we go back to what I just said for I feel like we've gotten really off track?

No,

actually, we're not.

Again,

I'm talking about the same thing.

You're talking about the most important thing because.

Dude, you're interrupting me again.

Well, it is kind of our table.

Oh, so you can interrupt me, but I can't interrupt you.

The fact you can't answer this question shows that college is a scam.

Because if you can't say that Mother Teresa good and has a good time to do that, Mother Teresa denied anesthetics to people who are in serious pain because she thought the suffering would bring them closer to God.

I think a lot of what she did could be considered to be true.

Oh, okay, but I'll take it.

Whatever.

We can't just reference random things and use that.

Because right now we're talking about ideologies.

Again, I find that what I consider to be good revolves more around the fact that humans are social creatures and generally pro-social attitudes of promoting collectivism tends to be,

it tends to be better for people just because that's in our evolutionary nature but you are a Christian so you believe that there's a guy watching you and that's what makes you do good you're like if someone's watching me I am more likely to be nice but I want to be nice because I like

I was asking the question that for would you be more or less likely to shoplift if a police officer was next to you in a department store it's a very simple ethical question but how does that make me good or not that just makes me worried about consequences no it makes me worried about consequences, you little faced man.

If you do not have consequences.

But consequences does not determine ethics.

The mark of an intellectual fool is throwing around pejoratives when they don't have wisdom.

Remember that.

So let's

do it.

The question is this.

If you do not believe there's a consequence to your action, why wouldn't you do the action?

See, that's, again, the ideology of consequentialism.

I don't really subscribe to that.

There should be consequences.

No, but I think that consequences, your actions can exist outside of a vacuum of consequences, right?

We can't make our decisions based on whether or not we think the actions will

lead to a certain outcome because those will always be random, right?

So I revolve more around we try to do things that we think will promote general pro-social attitudes.

I think that that is more likely to get us other than worrying about that.

Let me ask you a hypothetical.

This will tell me a lot.

Is pedophilia wrong?

Pedophilia I consider to be wrong because it is actively damaging someone else, right?

But what if they say they're a minor attracted person and it's pro-social to be with a young person?

Why are they?

Do you know what pro-social means?

Like, pro-social means, there's like pro-social and antisocial behaviors.

It's like a theory of social psychology.

Pro-social generally means like working together, socialization.

You know, they're socializing with an eight-year-old.

Why is that wrong?

Okay, that's not socializing, and you know it.

Antisocial behavior usually means doing things that are considered

rejecting socialization, like rejecting other people, pushing things away, promoting things that other people actively end up

considering less.

So then should pedophiles go to prison?

Pedophiles go to prison.

I do not know what's the best way to handle pedophilia because.

No, because how do we know?

I don't think that anyone should molest a child, God forbid.

I really don't.

Why shouldn't a pedophile go to prison?

What?

That's.

Again, we're getting really off topic.

Let's go back to the ideas of good and evil and consequentialism.

College is a scam, and you're a perfect example, like one of the best

I've ever seen to show the intellectual drivel that is caught on a college scam.

Because you think that I'm not being taught about the good, the pure.

Let's go back to that, because I thought that was really interesting.

Yeah, the good, the true, the beautiful.

We'll do a couple more minutes.

The good, the true, and the beautiful, yes.

Right, so you think that that's something that can be quantified, can be taught, and that it should be a good way, and not only that, that it should be taught, that we should promote the ideas of good and beauty to other people.

Okay, but let's remove it from that.

What about just the idea of,

because remember the ancient Greeks and Romans that you love so much, they didn't have the same ideas of God in the same way that we do, but they still.

Thank you for saying I'm correct.

That was really nice of you.

It's true.

So when they wanted to learn, when they sought out learning, when they had schools of learning and all that kind of stuff, a lot of the times they didn't just teach things around ethics.

They taught other stuff.

They taught astrology.

They taught medicine.

They taught science.

They taught arts.

And people wanted to learn that.

Do you think that that ability, that experience of going into a place and saying, can you teach me more about this subject?

Can I learn?

Can I expand my worldview?

Can I get open to different beliefs?

Do you think that that should not be paid for or not be compensated?

First of all, it should definitely not be paid for.

Secondly, it depends if those disciplines are rooted in the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.

So you think only if they're tied into something that falls in your ideological worldview.

Can I finish?

Okay.

If those disciplines

are rooted in the good, the true, and the beautiful, absolutely.

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Let me give you a hypothetical example.

Okay.

So if you go, I don't know if this school has one, but if they have some sort of center for like feminist ideology or some sort of inter, do they have one here?

Then that is not in the pursuit of what is good, true, and beautiful.

That is in the pursuit of how I can complain and hate men and get a degree and be paid for that.

I'm a feminist, and I don't hate men.

Wait, hey, let me finish this.

Then tell me what a woman is.

But I'm just saying.

Again, we're not talking about that.

But what is a woman, feminist?

Do you think that people should not have the ability to read the works of feminist writers?

Of course, you should have the ability.

Should it be elevated and taught in an interdisciplinary way and treated as if that's higher education is a different question.

When people,

what is a woman?

Really quick, just tell me.

Women have written a lot throughout centuries about feminist writers.

Do you think that people should not be allowed to study all of these?

Do you think it not should be?

Of course, allowed and elevated are two different things.

But no one's forcing anyone here to take feminist studies.

Has anyone here been forced to take a class?

class full of drivel?

Of course, it's

part of the core of any school.

People, that's called general education, and we do that so that people get a lot of opportunities to get exposed to different mindsets.

Last question.

You know, I take a feminist class, and no one there is forcing me to believe in what they're saying.

It's just

exposing me to these writings, to these ideas.

That's what college is about: exposing yourself to different ideas.

We have clarity, but not agreement.

Last question: You are a self-described feminist.

What is a woman?

Why do you want to know?

I'm infinitely curious.

What's a man?

You're looking at one.

So, you would describe a man as having short hair, wearing a little popped collar.

Okay.

And why do you think that that's important to you, what a man and a woman is?

How does that define your worldview going forward?

Do you treat men and women differently?

Of course, we should treat men and women differently, of course.

In what way?

We should honor and protect women.

I want to honor and protect you, man.

Okay.

Do you not like that?

Do you not want to be honored in that?

Women are worthy of protection, of course.

I think you're also worthy of protection.

Don't talk down to yourself like that.

Please.

Can you tell me what a woman is since you're a feminist?

I want you to ask yourself: why do you think that it's so important to you that we define man and woman?

Like, how does that change the way you think?

Civilization cannot answer the question of what is male and female.

That civilization will cease to exist.

Is that why the Roman Empire failed?

Because all of a sudden Aristotle is not.

It's one of the reasons why this civilization is collapsing.

Because we send kids to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt that can't answer the most simple biological question.

I'll ask you one last time, what is a woman?

I know you're not asking this for actual...

You're trying to get a gotcha, right?

You're trying to get like a little baity question, but I really want to know, why is it so important to you to define things in certain categories?

How does that help your day-to-day life?

What other categories in the human species are there besides male and female?

Well, I just think that categorization is usually unhelpful when we're we're trying to improve society, right?

We want to make things better for people.

We want to improve things.

I have XY chromosomes.

Okay.

Can I give birth?

Um, no, you can't.

Bingo.

That's why categorization matters.

Do men menstruate?

What?

Do men menstruate.

Do XY chromosomes.

Do they menstruate?

Yes.

Menstruate?

Okay, because you're saying men suate, and it's like kind of a little.

But again, you're saying these things because you're trying to get a gotcha.

And I don't want to engage with you like that.

Why is it?

No, no, no, no.

I'm serious.

You asked the question.

And you keep asking me another question.

There are big differences between

men and women.

Here's a question, men and women are not the same.

And if you can't tell me what a woman is, and also, you're a feminist, shouldn't you be able to tell me what a woman is?

I'm a feminist.

Isn't that probably important to feminism?

What is the woman that you're trying to advance and protect?

Isn't that integral to

the business?

So, a lot of times feminism has to do with the ways that people have treated the female sex on a different way than the male sex has traditionally.

It's all about analyzing that and exposing it.

You say that men and women are different, and you think that they disagree.

Wait, I'm just asking you.

I'm not done yet.

And you think they should be treated differently, right?

Well, it depends in what context, though.

Should it be treated differently politically?

No.

Should they be treated differently under the law?

No.

Should they be treated differently in societal customs and norms?

Yes.

Why?

We should open doors for women.

Where do you do that?

For example.

Okay, but where do you see these

people?

We should protect women if they're under duress.

I think that we should protect everyone under duress.

We, as men, have a moral right to stand up for the women in our life, against predators, against rapists, against women.

I think we have the right to stand up for everybody in our life.

Of course we do.

Why do you see

yourself as a man who has to protect and take care of other people?

You are placing yourself on this higher ideological standpoint where you gain more power by having someone that you can protect.

I find that system and hierarchy of power to be just exhausting to traverse the world through, just looking at people as people to protect and people to take care of instead of us working together, right?

And trying to improve the world.

Do you think there are any differences between a male and female?

Are we talking about just the sex right now?

Of course.

There's tons of differences just between the male and the female sex.

But what's important is

how we treat people because of that.

So therefore, they have different contributions to give to society?

I think that everybody has different contributions, man.

Just because I'm not popping out kids 24-7 doesn't mean I can't be helpful.

I'm not saying that that's not the case.

However, if you can't tell me again what a woman is, and you're not able to answer the question because that is the cheat code against postmodernism.

No, because I don't think you even know what postmodernism is or what you're talking about.

You want to talk about Herbert Marcuse or Jacques Derrida or Michelle Foucault, one-dimensional man?

Okay,

we can get into all of that.

So don't try to tell me I don't know postmodernism because I have read the pantheon of the garbage

that you believe in.

Postmodernism.

But let me complete with this.

I don't want to expose myself to different mindsets.

I actually know what the literature says and what it means and what it espouses.

But this is why it's the great cheat code.

Because it is the war against.

That's what a woman is.

It's the only way that you can get a gotcha over everybody else.

Great conversation.

You'll see it online next week.

I hope you enjoy.

Thank you.

Yes.

Hello.

How are you?

Hi.

How are you doing?

Perfect.

All right.

So, what's your strongest opinion or political opinion right now?

My strongest?

Yeah, because I'm kind of here to debate you.

So I kind of want to hear what your

biggest gun is.

Let's do it this way.

Why don't you tell me something and we can.

I have lots of opinions.

Awesome.

All right.

I don't think college is a scam.

Okay.

And I mean, I don't know if you agree with that, but it's on all your shirts, so I would assume you agree.

Well, I did write a book.

So how about this?

What would you say is a scam?

I mean, I feel like it's kind of on you to tell me what the scam is because you're making the claim.

Can we agree on what it is?

Can you give me a definition first?

Because you're the one making the claim.

How about if 40% of your customers don't get the product?

Sure.

Is that a scam?

Well, I mean, it kind of depends on what your promise was when you gave the product in the first place, right?

Okay, so how about if you go to Chili's and 40% of your customers get food poisoning?

I kind of reject your equivalency here because you're saying that there's an actual necessary return on what you're asking for when college in and of itself doesn't necessarily say that you're going to get this.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

There might be a cultural I'm talking about a graduation rate.

So what is the national graduation rate?

I mean, you tell me.

59%.

How many of you know someone that dropped out of college?

Everyone hand goes up.

Yes.

That's me.

41% of kids that go to college do not drop out.

What percentage of kids that graduate college get jobs that do not require a college degree 10 years after graduating?

I'm not sure.

Over half.

Okay.

So the degree is useless for overall.

I feel like hold on.

Hold on.

Hold on.

So you just spoke.

So let me

debate those two things.

Graduation rate and whether or not a college degree is useful in the marketplace.

Well, I mean, you're kind of saying that like because people aren't or like they're not, I guess, using their degree 10 years from like when they got it, that necessarily means that like college is useless.

But you're kind of like forgetting, like, if I do a job, right, like any of the people working here, right,

they work for you maybe two years, work at turning point, right?

They take skills that they learn with them to a new job.

So not necessarily that they are using everything they learned at this job and then taking it to the next one.

They could be just like doing something completely different.

So you could say that maybe their work here was useless, but you probably wouldn't think that, right?

I think it's kind of the same thing with college, except that you might not necessarily use your degree, but you're using skills that you got at college for your next job.

So it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to use it in the future.

I want to make sure you're understanding what I'm saying.

The job that they get does not require them to have a degree.

So they could have gotten that job out of high school.

Sure.

So they could have got the skills without the $100,000 in debt.

You're kind of like skipping the midpoint here, right?

Because if you learn something and then don't necessarily use it at your next job, that doesn't necessarily mean what you learned before was useless.

So you're predicting this on what college

is something that you use in the future, right?

The vast majority of the students that enter college, what do you think they learn that is most useful in the marketplace?

Oh, that's a great question.

There's so many things that you can use.

You have interpersonal people skills, you have the ability to speak, you have communication classes where you learn how to make a speech, like I'm doing right now.

So you think

college is necessary to learn to give a speech or in a personal?

Probably not necessary, but I don't really know.

Hold on, because my claim was never it's necessary.

Your claim is that college is a scam, and I'm not saying it's necessary.

You're just saying it's a scam.

So you have to disprove that claim right now.

So a scam would be that if 10% or 20% of your customers do not get the value of what is being offered.

For example, if half

the promise that is guaranteed.

What's the promise?

Tell me the promise.

The promise, you go to Cal State Fullerton's website, it says achieve greatness.

So you can't achieve greatness.

So like what?

They're scamming people because they're not achieving greatness

if you're gonna interrupt me like every 10 seconds this is not much of a dialogue so it's more like a you know prostitution I got you that's fine I'm happy to do it whichever scene you want to

so you go to the website it says achieve greatness to prepare students for the 21st century and an ever-evolving job market According to statistics, half of graduates from this university will end up getting jobs of which they never had to go to college in the first place.

They never had to get the piece of paper.

They never had to go into debt and they never had to spend four years here.

If you went to United Airlines, if you went to a bank and 10, 20, 30 percent of their promises were a lot different, or what they deliver were different than the promises of what they say, we would shut them down as a scam and saying they're lying to their customers.

In fact, we do this all the time.

We do this to websites that say, Hey, take this pill and this supplement, and you're gonna be XYZ stronger, you're gonna lose all this weight.

We shut down industries all the time for misleading their customers.

So, for example, my question for this: when you guys enrolled at this university, did you know that if you're studying sociology,

more likely than not, you're going to end up in a job market where that piece of paper is not actually a factor in future employment?

Was that part of when you signed up here?

Did you know that?

Most people don't.

Personally, I did.

Okay, well then you're going to

have to.

So I guess like what you're making this claim off of is that like college makes a promise, right?

That you are going to be able to use your certificate that you get from the school in your future job, right?

That's the claim that you're making from what I'm aware.

One of several.

I wrote a whole book about why it's a good idea.

Okay, but I'm just talking about what you're saying in front of you.

That's correct.

So there's a promise made to a consumer, you, a big amount of money borrowed, and that promise is not fulfilled far too often.

I would say 30 to 40% of the time, minimum, 50 to 60% of the time.

Okay, so what you're saying right now is, because I asked you, I said, where do they specifically say that you are guaranteed a job, right?

That's not what you're saying.

Hold on, it's embedded in the experience.

Anyway, is somebody here because they think their life is going to be worse because they go to college?

Definitely not.

Okay, the expectation of borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, is I'm betting on myself to enrich my future.

That's the whole idea why they're here.

Yeah.

Okay, so it's not as if you walk around, you're like, well, it's a risk.

You know, here at college, take, you know, North African lesbian poetry and spend all this time here, you know, learning why men can give birth.

No, the idea is that I'm going to suck it up and go through these classes of the four most important years of my life where I have energy and I have passion, and then I'll be able to go get a great job.

For certain degrees and measures, that's the case, but here's the part, in economics or in markets, you need informed consent.

And far too often, students are not given informed consent for the debt burden, the time, and unfortunately, the dropout rates that are associated with college.

Not to mention the ideological drivel that is.

You know, honestly, like, I think you're touching on an important point, which is that there needs to be an informed consumer.

However, I think that, like, one way, because my original question was, do you think college is a scam, right?

And you tried to give me like a metric for which it's like making it a scam.

But like I feel like you haven't said anything about like how like college, like college doesn't promise you that you're going to get it.

Okay, so that's not like anything.

So I feel like

you just proselytized for like five minutes.

Come on, but can I get it turned aside?

But let me ask a question.

How many of you are forced to take classes that are a waste of time that you do not want to have to take?

Every hand goes up.

So how is that not a scam?

So they're being forced to take classes they don't want to take that if they had other choices.

So here, hold on, let's ask the audience again.

Out of those classes that you didn't want to take, do you think that you learned anything useful at all?

Even one thing?

You learned nothing useful.

Hold on, hold on.

You guys learned nothing useful from even like even a class that you didn't like.

Come on.

Really?

So, yeah, you get, come on.

That means the crowd is against you, man.

So, I mean,

I'm hearing a lot of yeses and no's.

You gotta leave there as yes.

But hold on, so maybe you might have learned something to your point.

Yeah.

Could you have learned that from watching YouTube videos or reading books or not having to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt?

You definitely might have, but listen, you're an employer, right?

If you're an employer,

400 people.

If you're an employer, right, and you're looking for an accountant, right?

You can take someone who is completely, and this is probably a pretty common talking point, but I kind of want to see what you say to it.

You can take someone who is self-taught, right, has their own credentials, and I'm sure you would interview them, right?

You have 100 applicants, right?

You're telling me you wouldn't screen on someone who probably, I don't know, like went to Harvard for like accounting.

You know what I'm saying?

Well, if they went to Harvard, they would never work for Turning Point USA, like ever.

Says a lot about your organization, then, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does.

Yeah,

we don't have any sort of way.

So let me just share your point.

So

what you're saying is someone could be overqualified based on the degree that you think is worthless, right?

If you go to Harvard, I immediately think you're an intellectual idiot.

Oh, wow.

If you go to Harvard, I think you are infected with the worst possible idea.

And that kind of goes against what you just said about them being overqualified to work for your organization, right?

Well, I never said overqualified.

I said they would be over-credentialed.

There's a big difference in qualification and credentials.

I mean, you just talked about how you can get a credential outside of school, but in this case, someone's good.

You need to get wisdom and intelligence outside of school.

Ooh, okay, that's a good one.

But you don't have to get a credential outside of school.

Wisdom and intelligence.

So there's a big difference.

Wisdom is the knowledge of things that don't change.

Intelligence is the knowledge of things that do change.

Intelligence is the processing power that allows you to find wisdom and factual knowledge.

But to your point, so if there were applicants, we don't require college degrees for applicants at Turning Point USA.

But you say the accountant thing.

The vast majority of kids that go to college are not becoming accountants, lawyers, doctors.

Okay, hold on, but

hold on a wait.

But you already so you're agreeing with me, right?

You think that it's important that someone has a credential to do an accounting job, right?

But that's, of course, but

hold on, wait.

So, I agree with the sliver of the reason why people go to college.

I'm not talking about a sliver.

You said college is a scam.

I do.

The ultimate is a good thing.

I'm holding you to that.

You said college is a scam, right?

Yes, and your only value criteria is that people couldn't get a job out of college, and you're literally saying that you can get a job out of college for being an accounting.

Let me make the shirt even more specific.

College in its current form that affects the majority of students at the majority of colleges, not counting the sliver cases of doctors, nurses, lawyers, accountants that are able to avoid left-wing parasitic ideology is a scam.

So, like, the majority of people that come at the bottom of the- But that doesn't make a good t-shirt, man.

All right, fair enough.

I mean, I can do my own little, like, yeah, like, you know, like conservative ideologies, like, making everyone, like, go back to, like, trad, you know, like traditionalism, like seventh century, you know, like, I can do that too, like, but we're not actually having a discussion if you just keep throwing buzzwords in here.

So, let me ask you this.

So, when you say college is a scam, right?

I gave you the longer explanation.

Yeah, you gave me the longer explanation, right?

So, you kind of conceded already that parts of college are not a scam, right?

Well, it depends what you get.

And then you, and the book is a good idea.

But But the parts that are easy to read in my book.

But the parts that I'm not going to read your book.

Listen.

I'm talking to you.

You're not arguing.

Come on, listen.

I'm arming.

Because I'm talking to you right now.

I want to know what you're saying.

I don't give a f ⁇ about your book.

I don't care about your book.

I just want to hear what you're saying to me right now.

So here, listen.

Hold on.

You're getting a little upset.

This communications course you talked about in college, you probably haven't learned very much about how to publicly speak effectively.

First of all, communication.

Don't swear at the person you're talking to.

I don't get really.

So you're kind of proving the point that college is a scam, kind of by you making making a fool of yourself in front of everybody.

So you should go demand your money back from that communications professor.

So what I'm trying to get at right here is

that people you talk to.

You said that college is a scam, right?

And we found a criteria in which college is a scam.

Hold on.

So again, I'm happy to direct you to my 300

page piece of literature where I dive into with necessary exceptions, but even if you go to become an accountant, there's a cost to that.

There's an ideological cost, there's a time cost, there's a financial cost, and that's if you are able to avoid the inevitable indoctrination.

A lot of other people want to ask questions.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you so much.

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