College is a Scam Setting People Up for Failure, Research Director Says

It’s always nice to have people in-the-know confirm things you already know.

New York Post:

The exorbitant costs of attending college sets students up for failure — and higher education is often a “scam” and unnecessary in some fields, a writer and researcher on market influences and monopolies said.

“I think that the financial aspects of college or higher education have overwhelmed the ability to create a citizenry on a very basic level,” Matt Stoller, a research director at the American Economic Liberties Project, told Fox News. “This is kind of like a slow-burning crisis that we have to look into.”

The average cost of going to a private college — including tuition, fees, books and room and board — went from $2,930 per year in 1971 to $51,690 in 2021, according to data from the nonprofit group College Board. Nearly a third of parents and students believe that college is overpriced, according to a recent Sallie Mae and Ipsos study.

Matt Stoller

I think that schooling exists to make citizens and to build a moral, self-governing society. Also, it’s there to let you get a job and build a life,” Stoller said. “I think that we’re falling down on all counts of that, and we have to look at why that is.”

Colleges are “such a mess in terms of administrative bloat” and are “saddling people with a lot of debt,” he added. “You can’t come out of a school with lots of debt and be a good citizen — you are now a dependent of someone else.”

Stoller also questioned the necessity of some degrees, like journalism. The high cost associated with journalism school, he said, “shows that it’s just a credentialing mechanism for a social class more than it is like a practical way to think about free expression in a democracy.”

Journalism used to be a working-class profession. There’s no rocket science behind writing a news article,” Stoller, who writes weekly newsletters for his own Substack account, told Fox News. “You just figure out what’s going on and you write it down.”

You need a high school degree for that – that’s it,” he said.

Yeah, journalists do a bit more than that now, but I agree with the premise.