In high school, when I thought of college, it was just something you did after senior year, the logical next step. College admissions weren’t that big of a deal and it was expected that you’d just end up at one of the local schools: Miami-Dade College, FIU, or UMiami. I knew of the other schools like Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and I think Notre Dame, but it just wasn’t a big deal and not really talked about. It wasn’t until I arrived at UMiami that I realized how big this business really is and how fat the bill really was. With that price tag, I figured I’d get a degree in a subject (accounting) that could somewhat guarantee a job (it did). Isn’t that what everyone does?
Class is in Question
Last week, several student organizations at Harvard University released a statement on social media that effectively blamed Israel for the current conflict.
The letter stirred controversy and led to a backlash against the involved students and groups. In the days following, a "doxxing truck" was seen driving around the Harvard campus, displaying digital billboards with the names and photos of students who were associated with the statement. This mobile billboard aimed to publicly expose those who were associated with the statement.
Also, billionaire investor Bill Ackman tweeted:
This also happened at Penn State as several of their high-profile donors, like David Magerman, who helped build the trading systems of Renaissance Technologies, threatened to cease all donations, citing the school’s hosting of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival last month and its response to the Hamas attack on Israel in October. This is also happening at Cornell and Stanford:
The uproar roiling elite US universities is snowballing as colleges attempt to balance free speech and condemnation of Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union. Penn is far from alone as a focus of the donor backlash and wider tumult, which has also affected schools from Harvard University to Stanford University. - UPenn Donors Pile Pressure on School as David Magerman Pulls Support, Bloomberg.
While it may seem surprising, some of this does look familiar.
Brand Outrage
At the corporate level, we have brands that we love and adore. Apple has iPhone dominance. Google is literally a verb to search. A Coke is the default word for soda (sorry Pepsi fans). And Bud Light is the default beer… oh wait, not anymore. The same outrage that led to the fall of Bud Light is the same outrage that led to something like the Goya Boycott, which is the very same outrage happening now. Consumers tend to not like when brands act out of character, and the brand in question is that of the upper class: The Ivy League.
A quick google search of statements on the war from the University of Alabama or Clemson University comes up short, but that’s not their brand. I’m sure they’ve put out statements and their students have much to say, but the public isn’t looking to those schools for that — they’re tuning in for College Football, the third most popular sport in the U.S. The Ivy League, along with a couple of other highly selective schools, however, are the target schools for many of the top jobs in this country. Their brand is of prestige and excellence, which is now being questioned by their fans, the elites. Again, we have billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya with the following statements:
Which brings us to this broader question about the value of a college education.
College, the business
There’s a clip going viral this week of a girl in her mid-twenties venting her frustrations about how useless her degree is looking to be:
Tell me why I make more money serving. I have my literal business marketing degree that put me in a cute $80,000 in debt — and I make more serving sushi roles. - TikTok
She goes on to point out that the only well-paying jobs require experience but as someone fresh out of college, she clearly has no experience, so what’s the point of the degree? This video has about 520K views on TikTok along with hundreds of thousands of impressions all over X as it’s being reposted over and over and over again. Each tweet with hundreds of comments and quotes; with the majority of the sentiment being that maybe we actually should question the cost of our degrees.
I’ve heard these sentiments myself from plenty of my peers. It’s not so much that the degree is worthless, it’s not, it’s that it’s pretty damn expensive. The top jobs don’t usually hire from the community college or the state university; so if the point of a degree is to get a good job, well then you’ll need to get that degree from a top school and if you can’t afford that — well that’s fine because you can get a federal loan no problem. But even at the high price, a well-paying job still isn’t guaranteed. If I started a small business and went to the bank to ask for a loan, they would ask for my business plan, and if I just said that I would figure it out along the way — I’m not getting the loan. But a kid fresh out of high school with no clue, sure here’s $100k. This leads to the current crisis of mounting student debt, most of which will go unpaid, but the school still gets its check. It’s a good business, I guess, but at what cost?
Thank you
While I understand the outrage, these are just kids and college is probably the only place where you’re basically encouraged to go against the status quo. I also keep thinking about how all the news is specifically tied to that of the top schools because those are the schools we care about. When you invest in a company, you do it because you like the results. I like iPhones so I own Apple stock (this is not financial advice), but if my phone were to act up then I’d probably question where it was made. A lot of these elites are donors, and suddenly they don’t like the product they're getting; but if college is meant to shape the minds of young people, well then shouldn’t they punish the ones doing the shaping instead? Also, if you had asked my opinion on a political topic 5 years ago, I’d probably say something very different than I would say today; and if you asked me again in another 5 years, my answer would most likely be different than the previous 2 times. Anyway, if you have any questions, want more explanations, or strongly disagree, comment below, follow me on Twitter (X), follow me on Threads, follow me on TikTok, or shoot me an email.
Disclaimer: These views are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization with which I am affiliated with.
Hopefully in a few years with the development of AI we will not need any more elite schools, just smart kids able to use the tools at their disposal.