https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=l2KISLm0EWE
I think universities facilitate it because you can go to university to not be something instead of going to university to be something and that’s, it’s pleasure island and the price you pay for it, especially in the US, is debt and you’re enticed into it because the administrators can pick your pocket so they rob your future self while allowing you to pretend that you have an identity right? very nasty and you can’t declare bankruptcy with your student loans in the US it’s indentured servitude and it is precisely pleasure island, it’s exactly that and so tuition fees have shot way out of control and part of the reason that universities don’t make more demands on their students and let them get away with all the things they let them get away with is because they’re basically, why the hell would you chase them out? they’re a hundred thousand dollars or more so they can do whatever they want as long as you get to sell them to the salt mines right so, and you know, it’s not the only reason because the other thing that’s happened is that the rate of technological transformation is so fast now and the rate of turnover of things is that it’s it is genuinely harder for people who are, say, 18 to 20 when I was a kid, roughly speaking the kind of rough patch for life was probably 14 to 17, something like that now it’s, I think it’s 18 to 25 something like that and I think the reason for that is that all the jobs that the bloody hippies complained about being doomed to in the 1960s have now disappeared their problem was, oh my god, I’m going to have to go work for a corporation and get a salary for the rest of my life you know, and then I’ll just end up with a pension and that’ll be my whole life it’s like, well, it seems like a lot better deal than an endless round of part-time Starbucks jobs so, you know, some of it is that it’s just, it’s, it’s there’s a space now in our culture that is lacking for people to make that transformation from adolescence into adulthood and so it’s just, the cost of that is forestalled it’s not a good thing well, there’s a couple of problems with the degrees is that everyone has one, that’s the first one which, so because scarcity matters, obviously the second thing is that the match between the degree and the workplace has become less and less self-evident you know, what should happen when you go to university is you should learn how to think and formulate arguments you should learn to think, speak, and write that’s what the humanities are for they’re to make you dangerous, right? because if you can think and speak and write, you’re deadly in a complex job, you’re exactly what’s necessary but if you don’t have that, it’s like, what the hell good is the degree? so I mean, degree in English literature doesn’t prepare you for a job it could make you think, write, and speak which prepares you for any complex job, and that’s what’s supposed to happen but increasingly, I think that doesn’t happen and the employers are waking up to this very rapidly so, and they’re, I mean, they’ve already known that most, for most complex positions they have to train their people now they’re thinking, well, why do I have to bother with the degree if I’m going to train them if it isn’t bringing anything of value you see this in even fields like law when I went to do a debate at Queen’s University three weeks ago, I think they couldn’t get anybody to debate me you know, the guy had to play devil’s advocate we were talking about Bill C-16 I thought, Jesus, that’s so pathetic I’m talking about legal matters and I’m in one of the greatest universities in the West you know, I mean, it’s in the top 200, let’s say I couldn’t get someone to argue with the stupid psychology professor about law had to get a devil’s advocate and so, one of the things that was really disheartening talking to the students was they told me, four or five of them, they’re not learning a damn thing in law it’s all social justice nonsense it’s like, well, good, that’ll do in the profession it’s being done in any ways because lawyers are being replaced by automation and so a lot of what they do is dig up information it’s like, well, you can do that on your own and forms are proliferating like mad so the law school should be teaching you to be a monster you better be but you come out, you’re concerned with social welfare oh god it’s like, well, there’s just nothing to that it’s like, you can come out and say you want to be nice to people well, that’s nice, good, you go right ahead it’s like, I’ll go find someone who can do something and you can go be nice to people and see how effective that is