Once in Awhile Maher Makes Sense

[abbey1227]

Deadline
Bill Maher Slams Higher Education As A “Grift,” Likens It To Scientology
Greg Evans  Fri, June 4, 2021, 10:28 PM

UPDATE, with video Bill Maher took his weekly aim at coddled college students tonight, this time cherry-picking a couple campuses that have amusement park-style water slides to back up his assertion that colleges “are giant luxury daycare centers.”

On HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, the host slammed students for, as one report suggests, studying less than five hours a week, and he mocked course loads in “sports marketing,” “advanced racist spotting” and “You Owe Me An Apology 101.”

Maher’s New Rules rant was prompted by President Joe Biden’s American Families Plan, which the host said would spend “hundreds of billions” of dollars “so everyone can go to college.”

The Right, Maher said, calls the plan “social engineering,” while Liberals “see more schools as the answer to everything.”

Higher eduction, Maher said, “is a racket that sells you a very expensive ticket to the upper middle class.” He asked, “Is it really liberal for someone who doesn’t go to college and makes less money to pay for people who do go and make more?”

Actress Lori Loughlin, who served two months in prison for her role in the 2019 college bribery scandal, “recognized one good scam deserves another,” Maher said. He also compared higher eduction to Scientology, with both requiring increasingly costly levels of advancement.

“A wannabe librarian needs a masters degree to get an entry level job filing books,” Maher said, sounding astounded at the centuries-old concept of Library Science.

Calling higher education a “grift,” Maher griped that despite increasingly costly advanced degrees “no one knows how to change a tire,” and that “the answer isn’t to make college free, the answer is to make it more unnecessary, which it is for most jobs” so that those who can’t or don’t want to go “don’t feel shut out” of society.

[abbey1227]

co-inky-dink?


Mike Rowe

Off the Wall

Mike - Bill Maher's current rant on higher ed is almost identical to everything you've been saying for the last thirteen years through mikeroweWORKS. I mean, like, literally identical. How do you feel? Ripped off? Flattered? Or maybe, a bit disturbed that you and Bill Maher see eye to eye on more than a few issues here of late…
Tim Boyer


Hi Tim
If I were to learn that Bill Maher used mikeroweWORKS as a resource for the contents of his most recent rant, I’d be nothing but flattered.
I built mikeroweWORKS, in part anyway, to be a resource for people who wanted to reconsider the conventional wisdom that college is the best path for the most people. However, everything I believe to be true regarding that issue, I’ve learned from researching the work of others. Likewise, everything I believe to be true about the profound unfairness of making taxpayers pay the tuition of those who wish to attend a university has already been articulated by a long list of people a lot more qualified than I.

Point is, it’s important to give credit where it’s due. That’s partly why I’ve highlighted several of Bill’s recent rants on this page. He’s speaking what I believe to be the truth to a large audience that probably doesn’t want to hear it. That makes him credible. But it’s also true that the most persuasive people don’t care who gets the credit – especially when it comes to changing hearts and minds. And that’s what’s really at stake here.

I want people to radically rethink higher education. Toward that end, I’ve always maintained that making a four-year degree “less expensive” is a great symptom, but a lousy goal. The better goal is to make a four-year degree less necessary than it currently is. That’s not an “anti-education” position. It’s a cry for rationality, proportionality, and common sense. The vast, overwhelming majority of jobs that require a diploma from a four-year school, should not. Some should, but most should not.When it comes to learning, we can’t keep presenting the most expensive path – college – as “the best path for the most people.” And we can’t make college cheaper by asking everyone else to pay for it. That’s part of what makes the whole proposition a “racket.”

Bill Maher seems to agree, so I’m happy to share his video on this page. Does this mean I agree with everything in the video, or everything he says? Of course not. But he’s reaching an audience that I don’t have, with a message that I firmly support. For that reason, I hope his message has a lasting impact, regardless of where it originated.

Mike

PS In the attached video, Bill mentions a stat that I had never heard. “In 1960,” he says, “15% of college students received an “A.” Today, that number is 45%. That’s not because college graduates are getting smarter…”

I’ll definitely be quoting that one down the road!

[Prometheus]

Yeah. He does: