The Charlie Kirk Show - Do You Really Need College to Succeed?

Episode Date: April 11, 2026

Is college still the ticket to success or one of the biggest scams being sold to young people today? From skyrocketing tuition to questionable career outcomes, this episode compiles Charlie’s best arguments and exchanges, challenging the idea that college is the only path forward for American young people. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com!    Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You've got to stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a turning point USA college chapter. Go start a turning point you would say high school chapter.

Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life and I encourage you to do the same. Here I am. Lord, use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go.

Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with noble gold investments at noble gold investments.com. That is noble gold investments.com. I'm going to keep it short and sweet. I'm just curious about your stance on college is a scam because I feel like according to the Hamilton Institute, people who get bachelor degrees over a total lifetime earnings will earn of over $1 million more than those who don't. And also I feel like college is an important place for people to like go learn valuable life lessons. And also it's good to have like a balance

society because then you're going to get artists, you're also going to get architectures, you're going to get engineers, you're going to get all sorts of different people that we need in society because, like, what's the point in living if we don't have writers or artists, you know? So I just want to get your take on that. The question is, do the best writers learn to write in college? Probably not. No, the best writers are gifted writing, and they learn to write by writing. And I would just argue that this kind of holistic view you get, for example, what are you studying? Can I ask? Economics. Okay, so what do you think of Thomas Sol?

I actually really like him. I bought his book Basic Economics. He's one of the first economists. Do they teach it here? Not yet, but also for like one year. Okay, so now you're proving my point. If you're studying economics and they're not teaching Thomas Sol, you're not getting an education, you're getting an indoctrination.

And you're being scammed. Okay. Milton Friedman. Do they teach Milton Friedman here? No, but I'm aware of him. Okay. Ludvin von Mises. I'm aware of him, but no.

Murray Rothbard. Hold on. No. F.A. Hayek. No. Frederick Bosteat. No. You're not getting economics education.

you're getting an indoctrination. You should know everything. It's not your fault. But what you're paying for or going into debt for is not a real economic education. Those are the people that theorized about free markets, which is a legitimate school of thinking, monetarism, private property rights. And the fact that you, I'm not criticizing you. I'm criticizing the institution that's failing you, that you don't know what these people believe

and you're not being taught that rigorously proves my point that college is a scam. Yeah, but again, I've only been here like a semester and a half. So... But do you know who John Maynard Keynes is? Heard. I actually did read about him a little bit. Okay, so you're right about John Maynard Keynes. In class.

In class. Yeah, in class. Yeah, in class. Right. So that's my point, is that they'll teach you Keynes, but they won't teach you one out of the seven people that I mentioned, a Bostiat, Hayek, Von Mises, Rothbard, Seoul, or Friedman. And that's, that proves my point, which is that it's all demand side.

It's all one picture of an economic argument that is not the complete picture of what, now maybe later on you'll get a supply-side economics teacher here, but this idea that you go to college to kind of get your worldview liberated, yet you get your worldview altered, to be perfectly honest. Secondly, to your point of earnings over a period of time, it matters completely and solely on what you study. If you study the liberal arts, even after 10 years, study came out yesterday, 16 lowest-paid majors happen to be some of the highest majors that people actually go and study, which is liberal arts, you know, sociology, God bless people that do that stuff, I suppose, but you're also filled with all of the woke rubbish that is infecting our society.

All right. I just want to talk to you about that book. It was a good segue. Oh, did you read it? No. Okay. But I want your thoughts. Like just face to face. Why do you think college is a skin? Okay. So half of this audience, if you get a job, we'll get a job that doesn't require a college degree. 41% of kids that enter college will not graduate and the vast majority of kids, 60 to 70% that go to college, I believe study things that are completely worthless, meaningless, and don't enrich society at all.

But is that the fault of the student or the college? Because I looked in the stats for this, it's usually because they either don't have the finances to support themselves going to college. They don't, they have mental health problems that lead them to dropping out or stress or their family's not supporting them. So is that the fault of college?

college that they pick bad degrees is at the fault of the college that they can't support themselves, right? It's like getting a gym membership and then saying, well, you know, I don't want to actually go work out. It's the fault of the gym. So a good question. So first, the 41% of kids that drop out, the federal government will fully underwrite any four-year college through FASA. You know that, through a student loan. Meaning so if anyone has financial difficulty, that's not really a thing. The federal government will fully grant you your loan to any for a university, right? So you might not want to take on that student loan burden. You might not want to take that on, but that's number one. Number two, I can't speak to the mental health issues. I doubt that

41% of the kids that graduate and that number all have mental health issues, but maybe that's the case. I'm not sure. I don't know that number. But let's talk about the institution itself. So everyone in the audience here, how many of you have had to take classes that are a waste of time that you wish you didn't have to take that are a waste of money and that every single hand goes up? Look around. Look around. Look around. They're scamming every kid in this audience. They are forcing them to take classes that make them poorer, that take up their time in order to get the credential. That is a institutional scam. And by the way, every other part of life is all about your own customization, your Netflix account, how you get your burrito bowl, from how you dress, your Amazon cart is you are in charge.

But you come to college and they say you must go take these three, four, five classes that are very expensive. expensive, especially for you out-of-state students, to go further into debt, study things that don't matter, to find jobs that don't exist. That sounds like a scam. At least in my personal experience, right? Maybe some colleges, I would say... What do you study? I'm studying economics. Great. Okay. And what I would say is that I have a great levity and choices of classes I want to take. Even if, like, there's a bunch of general education classes, I have a great flexibility in the class I want to take. It's up to the student. if they want to take meaningless classes given their credit limit. Okay, but I mean, I would just speculate that this school still has specific criteria of classes, right?

Am I correct? Yeah, you have to take a diversity class. That sounds like a scam. They are robbing you to take a diversity class. It's actually not what you typically think. I think there's... I'm taking... Is it true?

Do you guys have to take a diversity class? No, no, this is true. This is true. All right, so that's a scam. Like, let's be clear. Diversity class scams. Can you define what a scam is? When you are getting ripped off with your money, your time, your resources, either beyond what is a market rate or against your will. So I'll give you an example. If you guys want to fly to New York and Spirit Airlines says we're going to charge you $2,500 for a one-way ticket, I think we all could agree flying Spirit Airlines for $2,500 is a scam. Like, you know it when you see it. I mean, it depends on how you view the worth of college. Like, if you've, the federal, the federal reserve for San Francisco gave a, released a newsletter discussing the actual finances behind is college actually worth it.

And they found that by age 40, you recoup all, at the average student recoups all their costs. If they graduate. If they graduate. And even accounting for that other economists also staged. No, so that's an important study. If you take out the top 10% that's not the case. So 10% of what? Top 10% of graduates and income earners. So the top 10% end up flourishing with a college degree. The other 90% do not. Do you know that there are 11 million job openings in this country that pay $75,000 a year that require six weeks of training that require muscular labor or using your hands? 11 million job openings. Now, a lot of you guys are in college because you, you've been pushed into college saying that you must get the piece of paper, you might get the piece of paper,

when there are very, they're good paying jobs, 11 million of them, but either your society, your parents, or your own choices are, no, I want to go to college, I want to go after that piece of paper. My contention is that there are way better options out there for a lot of students, not every student, but almost every, a lot of other students. Charlie, I think a part of your core rhetoric, there's actually some real truth there that, like, I think a lot of, there's people are getting really just pressure to go to college, even if they're make poor choices. I'm just saying that even while you're in college, you can make better choices to make yourself better. I totally agree.

Do you think most people do? I know some that are making great choices. I know some that are making terrible choices. So let's think about this. Why do you think, let's just say most make terrible choices? Would you say that's the case? I'll give you 40 to 60. Why do you think that is?

Maybe because the institution incentivizes bad choices. It's easy to coast and still graduate. It's easy just to check the boxes. right? It's not an institution designed around excellence. It's around let's get you through the mill as quickly as possible, get the piece of paper, pay your bill. Thank you

very much. But do you think that the culture around students going to college could change instead around their decision making? I think we need way less kids going to college. The institution itself is so broken. Let's be clear. Forced diversity classes, DEI, all that stuff. It's nonsense. If it was really

college really should be closer to what Hillsdale College is, which is about wisdom, beauty, truth, goodness, not just about job preparedness, but we've lost that completely. If it's about doctors, lawyers, engineers, and the skills, of course, but you know that, it's way beyond that. I mean, people's going to, I'm not to pick on you, but you're studying economics, that's terrific. That's a good reason to go to college.

It's not the best reason, I'll be honest, but it's a good reason, right? I mean, economics is a serious discipline. It's a real science. You know, we need people really rigorously studying that, so. If you're a parent, you don't need to be told that online safety is important. That's why TikTok has over 50 preset safety and privacy settings. And beyond that, parents can set up family pairing to help shape their teens' experience on the app. With family pairing, parents can get visibility into their teens, followers, and who they follow,

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Just because there's 50% of people who you say don't need college to get a job, why would it be a scam? There's a social impact about college, about, on America. College is, you know, good. The majority of kids that go to college when they graduate have a lower view of America than when they entered. Do you think that's a troubling thing? I think just changing your opinion doesn't really matter too much. Do you think that college teaches responsibility and hard work and... Sure.

Okay. Well, I find that hard to believe. Why is it that employers are more and more not wanting to hire college graduates, and they actually want to hire people that didn't go to college? What employers? You can name them out, man. Walmart just got rid of their, even in their corporate levels, so they don't go to college.

Coke Industries, one of the largest employers in the country from Georgia Pacific Railroad to Dow Chemical. They said, we no longer want kids that have gone to college. Because they end up causing problems because they're super entitled, and they're like, oh, what are my pronouns? and they have all this like left-wing nonsense that they've been filled with. Well, then you have engineers, doctors, lawyers, people that are... Sure, we need that, but that's less than 20% of the people that go to college. Yeah, but college is an institution.

College is a scam, but 25% of people become great people. No? Lawyers, doctors, engineers. That's not what college currently is, though. Again, I'm happy to have you read the book. College is a scam I wrote it. I can have a more wordy thing, which is the vast majority of people that go to college are receiving a scam for the money that they're borrowing. The vast majority.

Of course, there's exceptions. You can make whatever you want with your life. I mean, you can, but I mean, when you enter into an enterprise, we need to know that you are currently. Let me prove this to you. How many do you guys have to take classes that are a waste of time that you wish you wouldn't have to take? Every single hand.

You're being scammed against your will to take classes that make you go further into debt. Why can't you say, I don't want to take this class? Why are you as a customer you can't say? Can you do a differential equation? You what? Can you do a differential equation? Can I do a difference?

Can you explain me the anatomy of a human? Like someone off the top of my head? You know what psychology is. Yes, I do know what psychology is. Yes, I do know what psychological. I've read Freud and I've read you. Do you want me to explain psychology? Well, you can't explain it to the depths of a bachelor's degree or a PhD.

Well, hold on a second. Time out. I've sat here with no notes, no phone, and debated people with PhDs masters. Yeah, because you studies this because it's your job. Hold on. I didn't go to college, man. That's the point is you could do whatever you want without a college degree. You can listen to podcasts, read books.

You don't need to go. Think about if Gauss wasn't able to go to the University of Gotting Guy. That's literally the reason. I can't hear what you said. You know Gauss, right? A petition. Yes, vaguely, sure. vaguely.

Yes, vaguely, yeah. Do you know who Milframan is? Do you know who Herbert Marcus is? You know what Thomas Sol is? Do you use a phone? Do you know who Gubbner Morris is? Well, that's because of Gals. No, you don't.

So I could do gotcha too. Like, Oiler is going to get off your ivory tower. You understand that not everybody... He was able to become so proficient in mathematics. So here's the thing. The majority of kids that go to college are more depressed than when they enter. Secondly. Are able to perform much better in their field than someone who doesn't.

Well, then if that's the question, if that really is true, if college is this amazing accelerant, then why do so many people... I wouldn't say it's an accelerant. But if you're looking at a field of science, right? Let me finish, man. And you want to accelerate that field of science. Have you not done that yet? You need a degree.

All right. Let me make my point. If that's the case, why do half of these kids end up with anywhere between $50 to $100,000 in debt? And they end up getting a job that says, oh, sorry, you never needed the degree in the first place. Why is that the case? Tell me.

People on average, once going to the college, make more money. Well, that's not true. They end up getting a job. That is. That's only if they graduate, and it depends on the field of study. Do you know, the average college graduate now is getting a job at $61,000 year. The average plumber, after 18 months, $68,000 a year. Well, sure, but the plumber isn't able to study with peers. The plumber didn't go to college. The plumber went to trade or technical school. There's 11 million job openings that do not require a college degree in this country.

11 million. Well, who engineered the stuff plumbers use? I'm sorry what? Who engineered the stuff plumbers? use? I'm sure someone here? I mean, it's like, it's like, it's like saying who designed the airplane for the pilot to fly. I mean. Someone with a degree that went to college. I was going to college. I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying you get rid of all places of higher learning. The way it's currently comprised for you guys, the amount of debt you have to go into, the classes that you

say don't get rid of places of higher learning, but then you're going to say college is a scam. You're not debating in good faith because it is a scam. So let me ask you a question. Can you point to other things of American life the last hundred years that have been scams. For example, when someone, they run an advertisement, they say, buy these pills because, you know, we're going to make you super muscular. And they don't have all the fine print that it might not work

and you have to have a monthly subscription. We shut down that business for being a scam. That's a little different, though. That's a product. How is it different? Hold on a second. When you show up to college, do they tell you, you have to take all these classes that you didn't sign up for? Did they, it said that you're going to have to take all these different classes? Did they tell you that half of you guys would not ever use

your degree when you go into your career? How many guys knew that? You guys knew that when you signed up? Well, college is what you make of it, right? You guys are willingly participating in the scam. Good for you. The point is this, is that most kids know deep down, they're getting ripped off. The number one thing I hear from people across the country in corporate America, boy, college is a waste the time. Boy, I wish I never would have gone. Now I have $60,000 of debt, $70,000 in debt. I wanted to start a business, but now I don't have the credit to do it. Instead, we are wasting our most prize possession, our 18 to 22-year-olds to go stick them at many universities when they shouldn't be here in the first place, and it is a failed project. It is making us poorer. It is making, and by the way,

just look at the actual numbers over a period of time. Has it worked? Is homeownership now going up for young college graduates? Well, are we going to blame that on college, though. There's a lot of different reasons that people are not able to buy homes. It's the most equally applicable thing across the board for a generation. And if you look at the average, how much debt do you have to go to school, by the way? None. None. Okay, wow. Are you on scholarship? Yeah. Okay, so who's paying for your college then? Probably the federal government. Okay, so I'm paying for your college, is what you're saying.

My taxes are paying for your college. So wait, do you have a, you're on grant or what? I'm not going to discuss my college finances. Well, no, this is really important. This is why you're so defensive of college. This is why you're so forceful because you don't have to walk around the rest of your life with $100,000 student loan debt. I know plenty of people that have part-time jobs and go to college.

This explains you perfectly. I, the taxpayer, when I write my check to the IRS, I'm subsidizing your ability to go to college. Okay. When I write my check to the IRS, I also give money for people to go to college. You should have skin in the game. You should, and you don't right now. You are doing a freeloading thing.

Of course you should be defensive of college. I pay taxes. I pay federal taxes. I'm sure I pay a little bit more than you, but that's a separate issue. But the point is this is that you think you pay anywhere close to the tuition value you get at the school? Probably not. Yeah, probably I do. It's like $5,000 a semester.

It's a lot of money, but you get a lot out of that. Hold on. How much is it to go to school here? It's around $5,000. So in-state? In-state, yeah. Okay. Did that include room and board and tuition?

No. Okay. How much does that cost? Room, board, tuition, all of it's around $11,000? 11,000 semester. So you pay $22,000 a year in taxes? No. Okay, got it.

So you're in a tax deficit, which means the U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing your education. That's fine. I'm not faulting you for it, but this is why you're so defensive. Is you're detached from the price. You're detached from the cost. It's easy to be defensive as something you're not paying for. Hey, everyone. We're excited to tell you about Charlie's favorite science.

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That's strongsell.com forward slash Charlie. And don't forget to use special discount code Charlie at checkout to get a special 20% off just for Kirk listeners. Strongsell.com forward slash Charlie. Check it out right now. I just was curious about your stance on, like, college is a scam. Yeah. And I just was curious, you know, why you say that. Let me prove it to you.

How many of you have to take classes that are a waste of time that you wish you shouldn't have to take? Well, there you go. I rest my case. Yeah, no. How many of you guys know at least three people that dropped out that went to this college previously and earlier? Okay.

The national graduation rate is 41%. Most people will go to college, do not graduate. You guys actually go to a school that, has a lot of applicability in the job market outside of some of the majors that are offered, but aeronautical engineering, computer engineering, which, you know, go work for Elon. And but so this school is actually a little bit more of the exception than it is the rule, because I think humanities are largely one of the great waste of time and kind of societal poisons and cancers that are happening in our society.

So, yeah, I'm happy to continue. So, yeah, so what do you recommend an 18-year-old dude or a girl to do after? after high school. Turn up the volume. Can we try? I apologize. Sorry, yeah. We're going to try.

And I will come out there and say hi to you guys in a second. Yeah, and we're going to go say hi to all of our friends over there. So, yeah, what do I recommend? It all depends on what you want to do. The worst thing you can do is enter into a four-year agreement where you have to borrow a bunch of money, try to find your way, go take a bunch of class. that have very little relevancy, and next thing you know, you end up with a college degree, and you end up getting a job that doesn't require a college degree. Here's a fact. Half of people

that graduate college end up getting a job that does not require a college degree 10 years after they graduate. That is the best argument I have. It goes to show the diploma doesn't actually have. I mean, you're looking at engineering students. You're looking at, you know. Engineering's different. You know, finance students. I qualified that. Students like that. For example, I went to community college for two years. and, you know, a lot of other people go to community college. You get free community college for two years. Then you could transfer over. And then two years at a college like Cal Poly or, you know, university.

And, you know, the top five paying, you know, jobs at a college are accountants, engineers, teachers. Try to get closer to the mic so people get to. You know, teachers, engineers, stuff like that. And it's just, you know, and then the guys, the people that are wearing the shirts are actually in college. So I'm just curious, like, you know. They know better than I do that it's a scam then. I mean, it's just someone like me, you know. I think it just comes down to hard work ethic, you know?

Like, I don't understand, like, not everyone's built for the trades, not everyone's built to go into construction or, you know, work as a painter or whatever they're doing after college. Or a mechanic. Yeah, exactly, you know. And I just, you know, a large majority of people going into college out of high school, I think it's a good choice for kids because they have, years to develop as a human being

versus just jumping into the workforce and making, what, 30, 40 grand? And you can't live off that right now. I mean, are those folks over there developing as human beings? I mean, I'm not talking about them. But hold on. I'm talking about, you know, that's what college produces,

though, angry, bitter, resentful activists that hate the country. That's not developing. That's hardening and honestly creating, you know, a mobilization army for the radical left. That's what we've seen. You got your major courses where you're taking I'm a real estate finance, so I'm taking classes for real estate finance.

I have internships in real estate finance. I'm not going into that field after college, but I'm saying you take classes at college to get a job after college. And most of the universities, you get over $75 grand a year out of college. And if you do the route of two years at community college and transfer into a university, you're able to pay off that debt, which is around $20K, $30K for a school like this. You can go to state school, and then you're off to the races. If you graduate, 41% don't, so, because they shouldn't have gone in the first place. Then what do they do?

What do you do after? They never should have gone. I mean, yeah, we have 11 million open trade jobs in this country. Here's the thing. People do not want to work with their hands, and parents don't want to send their kids to go work with their hands, because it's considered to be dirty type labor. 11 million job openings in this country that require just a six-month certification, whether it be auto mechanic, right, HVAC, plumber, so on and so forth.

And it's not for everybody. I mean, I get what you're saying. It's just like the large majority of people in America right now are just lazy. They're not going to be doing that after high school. Well, we agree. So does college make you lazy or make you work harder? Makes you work harder. I mean, I work throughout college.

You are the exception then. Because employers are disagreeing. They say we've never seen such lazy, entitled, narcissistic college graduates. In fact, most employers say if you have a college job, degree, you're put in a different category. They prefer people out of high school. Unless you want to go work for Bank of America in a soulless laptop job for the rest of your life and, you know, go learn about how men can become pregnant at some HR, you know, department survey. Or you use your analytical skills that you use in school to get a job that pay six figures. You don't, you can develop

analytical schools outside of college. I think, I think you're just, I'm living proof of that. I think you're just, yeah, I mean, I almost dropped out too. And, and, and I'm not saying it wasn't, it wasn't a right choice for you, but more times than not, kids are deceived and lied, and they have tons of animosity because this school is unique. If you go to UCLA or if you go to UC Berkeley, you're not left with $30,000 in debt. You're left with $130,000 in debt, right? I wasn't expecting this. I have to say, but death of recess, it stopped me in my tracks. This isn't about dodge balls and jungle gyms. It's about control. The modern American classroom didn't just happen. It was intentionally designed. It was standardized and centralized.

And once you see who built it and who protects it, everything clicks. Billions of dollars are flowing through education bureaucracies every year. Test scores collapse. And somehow the answer is always more money and less parental authority. The documentary breaks down how organizations like the N.E.A. Amassed enormous influence. How radical gender ideology entered classrooms and why something as basic as recess, movement, freedom, childhood, you know, had to go. That's not random.

That's systemic. Institutions protect themselves. They do not protect your kids. And that's why this documentary exists on Angel Studio streaming platform, Angel Guild. Angel Guild is willing to distribute films that challenge powerful systems when legacy media won't touch them. So right now, go to angel.com slash Charlie and watch Death of Recess right now. If you're a parent or plan to be, you need to see this. That's angel.com slash Charlie and watch Death.

of recess. If you feel as if there's a massive amount of injustice in the world, there's a lot of truth to the argument that you as a young person have been lied to and misled and that you have been told to do things that are not in your best interest, one of them being having to go to college to succeed. I do not believe that a majority of young people should be going to college. In fact, I think that college is largely a scam, and I'll prove it to you. How many of you have to take classes that?

that you are forced to take that have no relevancy to you degree or major, and you wish you shouldn't have to take. Yeah, every hand goes up, right. And so the idea that just a piece of paper is going to be able to grant you access in society is a highly questionable one at best. And so how many of you know someone that dropped out of college? Raise your hand, yeah, almost every hand goes up. You're being forced to take classes that really have no relevancy to your future, whatever that might be, and you're also simultaneously then knowing that people are dropping out at a record rate, ask yourself the question, why is this the case?

But this is something I want to try to just hopefully find some common ground on, which is the following, which is that if you feel as if the game has been rigged against you as a young person, you're not totally wrong. There is a understandable anger that begins to set in, and I know a lot of you feel this way, as if I've done everything I've been told to do, and I do not get the same shot at the American dream or at flourishing that my parents did.

And I will say that we could talk at length about what to do about that, but I think that there is a, there's a critique out there by some conservatives that all young people are lazy and all that. I don't believe that. I think there's plenty of lazy young people. There's lazy people in every age group. I don't think that millennials and Gen Z are generally lazy. I think that they've been, they've done everything they've been told to do. And now they're looking at their life when they're 25, 26, and 27. And they're like, wait a second. I followed the rules. So my message is, understanding that critique, let's try to turn some of that cynicism into hope into a country that could be something you could buy into, something you could do in your own life to actually find meaning and purpose, because cynical people do really bad things.

They do. Over time, cynical politics is not good for society. You get very radical political movements when you start to be cynical about everything. And guess what? I have to wrestle with this myself. I'm cynical about a lot. But instead, I have to go through the process of stopping the cynicism and saying,

wait a second, what do I believe? What's the country I want to live in? What can I do actually hopefully get an optimistic, hopeful message out? Because the politics of cynicism is bad for everybody. If you think things are always constantly falling apart, and there's no resolution, there's no way to try to solve it, then by definition what comes next is either going to be an authoritarianism or anarchy, one of the two.

And one will lead to authoritarianism, right? anarchy does not last. It doesn't. Anarchy happens, and then an authoritarian person takes over. And you saw this in the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, when people get hyper-cinical about the political process, they're willing to give their political power to a Napoleon or Vladimir Lenin or whatever. I don't want that, you don't want that either. And so if you're feeling as if the game has been structured against you,

I want to just say there's a lot of truth to that argument. And conservatives don't always talk like this. Conservatives will usually say work harder, study harder, live by the rules. I agree with all those things, by the way. I think there can be a little bit more grit in this generation and all that. But I think it would be unfair and not true to act as if right now, a 20-year-old that UC Berkeley, has the same set of circumstances that someone in the year 2004 had here. It's just not true.

And the lack of recognizing that, I think, is some that creates even more cynicism and more anger. What exactly do you mean by college is a scam? Good question. I wrote a whole book about it. Largely, the value proposition that you are being offered is not worth the time or the money that many of you are forking over. There's exceptions to that generally, but for example, the vast majority of students that graduate from four-year college,

they'll end up getting a job if they get a job at all in a career or a job that doesn't require a college degree. So henceforth asking the question, why do they go to college in the first place? Okay, now what do you mean about jobs that don't require a college degree? Like working at Starbucks as a barista. Okay. So what exactly do you mean by the value proposition not being sufficient for the cost of going to college? Yeah, so, I mean, going $30,000, $50,000 into debt, that's a significant thing.

and hopefully if you're going to do that, you're going to be able to prove and have some value for that reason. So, for example, there was a study that just came out in the last day, the 16 lowest-paying job majors, and the vast majority of those are actually what kids study in college, right? Communications, liberal arts, things of that nature. And so the question is, why even go to college at all if you're just basically getting a credential that is worth less and less money in the marketplace?

Now, if you study engineering, if you study finance, terrific, but the scam also is just beyond the financial value proposition. It's the ideological pollutants that are spread on college campuses and the, let's just say, some of the left-wing indoctrination that occurs here as well. Okay, so moving aside from that red herring there, I myself am a communication major, and I am very well aware of the communication majors who just take a four-year degree and go into jobs that either don't

require a degree or... Try to get as close to the mic as you can. Is that okay? Thank you. It's okay. Yeah. But anyways, I'm aware of the communication majors who only get a bachelor's degree and if they're lucky, they're only able to get research assistant jobs in

communication or not even get a job that requires a degree at all. But would not those who who continue on to get masters and doctorates in communication, who get hundreds, who get $100,000 a year or $200,000 a year research jobs, would that not counteract the total economic,

socioeconomic value of those who just go into college and then end up Starbucks baristas? Potentially, yeah, I mean, also master's degrees are expensive, right? Ph.Ds are expensive. so you're looking at least at $150,000 to $200,000 in debt, minimum, if you're going to do that. And if that's the path you want to take, so be it. But there are 11 million job openings in the country right now that pay $80,000 and more that don't require a college degree. 11 million job openings.

And I don't think we're always telling our young people, you know, the next generation that these jobs are available to you. It's an expectation that you go to four-year college. And, in fact, you're treated and almost considered to be dumb if you don't go to four-year university. And I think that's a big mistake. And not to mention the vast majority, 41% of kids that enter college should not graduate. There's something deeply wrong with the system. So from what you're telling me, though,

from what you're telling me, though, it sounds more like the problem lies not in college itself, but rather the individual paths that people choose who look at a situation, make the wrong decisions, don't stay in school as long as they need to in order to get the career that they won. Or they drop out because they don't see the value. They drop out because they don't think it's worth their time. And again, half of this audience, after 10 years if they get a job,

they'll end up getting a job that didn't require them going to college in the first place. Half. That sounds like a scam. Why are they here in the first place? Why are they borrowing all this money and spending four years on a university just to go get a job that never would have required them to get the degree or the debt? or the four years being spent on campus. Thanks for the time. I appreciate it. Thank you.

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