Remember back in the day, you'd be watching TV,
flipping the channels, and then you'd see an ad for one
of those for profit colleges?
Be some dude in a T-shirt in the parking lot telling
you to get your shit together.
First off, how you going to tell
me to get my shit together?
Your shirt ain't even got a collar, brother.
Or worse, they'd level up after a little while
and get Master P's son to rap to us about education.
(RAPPING) Say ICDC, call up, ICDC College.
I say ICDC.
I'm so ICDC.
College.
Do you like reading and shit?
I think that's the first time a dude
lost a rap battle to himself.
But the thing is, people who graduated from these
for profit schools are often drowning in debt,
or end up with a degree that nobody respects.
The fact is, if you want a degree somebody respects,
oh, you got to get one at these, baby.
This is my actual college degree,
broadcast journalism, bitches, from a four-year institution.
[applause]
Florida A&M, four-year institution.
None of that parking lot bullshit.
Cost me about $60,000.
Should have been $45,000, but I flunked a year of school,
because I skipped school during midterms
to open for Tommy Davidson.
True story.
You know what I love?
This is the thing I love about college degrees.
You ever notice when you get a college degree,
your parents always want you to take a picture with them.
Like, they be cheesy and super, look at my mama.
Look at my mama.
My mama smiling harder than me, you know.
She's been in higher education for almost four decades,
so you know she's happy about the degree.
And I'm smiling, too.
To be fair, I'm smiling, but the only reason I'm smiling,
is because I ain't seen the invoice yet.
But now, the once exalted four-year college degree
is starting to feel a lot like the parking lot education.
It's no wonder that people are starting
to doubt the whole thing.
More and more Americans are asking themselves,
is a college degree still worth it?
For high school senior, Reines Lucas, his biggest
challenge isn't getting into his dream schools,
it's paying for them.
It's just not sensible to go somewhere
and take on hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of dollars in debt.
Many top executives are questioning
the purpose of a college degree, including Elon Musk.
There's no need even to have a college degree, at all.
Listen, you know it's bad when
the dude who bought Twitter says college
is a bad investment.
That's one of them that'll take a second.
$44 billion, oh, yeah, that was bad.
It was a good joke.
Now we've talked about abolishing the police
and abolishing prisons, but I think it's time
to ask an honest question.
Is it time to abolish college?
We'll try to answer it in another installment
of "Long Story Short."
[audio logo]
Yes.
There are a lot of problems with college.
We can just say that off the top.
There's a lot of problems with college.
You've got annoying roommates.
You've got unfair professors.
Sometimes, after a night of underage drinking,
a bunch of Jamaican nightclub owners
decide to pull a gun on you after a small disagreement
over a cover charge to get in their establishment.
Also, a true story.
But one of the main problems in recent years
is that college has gotten way too expensive.
From the time Prince had his ass cheeks out until
when Megan Thee Stallion had her ass cheeks out,
which is about 40 years, the average cost
of a college education has risen nearly 500%.
It's gotten so expensive, that American kids
need to flee the country just to get an education.
With tuition prices soaring at home,
American students are flocking to Europe
for cheaper college options.
There are at least 44 schools across Europe
where Americans can earn their bachelor's degree for free.
All public colleges in Germany, Iceland, Norway, and Finland
are free for residents and international students.
How crazy is it that studying abroad, studying abroad,
that used to be for rich kids, that was
for pretentious rich people.
Now if you a baller, you need to go to school in America.
Oh, you studied in Berlin?
You broke bitch.
I went to the Ohio State University.
Fetch me caviar!
Now, it's bad enough that these degrees are so expensive,
but what makes it worse, is that they're
not necessarily preparing you to earn the money back.
Just 1 out of 10 business leaders
even believes that college graduates
have the skills needed to work in their workplaces.
And employers aren't the only ones questioning
what colleges are teaching.
So are the graduates themselves.
Ever wish you'd picked a different major back
in college?
Turns out, nearly 2 of every 5 American college grads
regret the choice they made.
Liberal arts majors are the most likely to
harbor that deep regret.
Nearly half of them say they wish they'd
picked another field of study.
The most regretted major, journalism.
Unh-uh!
No!
No.
Don't zoom in on my pain.
Come back up to my face.
I have no regrets about going to school
and paying money to learn journalism just to get on TV
to play a fake journalist.
I have no regrets!
I did real work.
I did real journalism.
Just show 'em, show 'em the work.
Hospital spokesperson, Brooke Wilson,
declined to speak with Family 46
on camera about the events that led up to the hospital's
impromptu inspection.
You telling me that wasn't real journalism?
That was hard-hitting journalism in my daddy's suit!
[cheering]
The point is, I had to dig in the closet for the VHS
to find that one.
The point is, many college degrees aren't even setting
you up for a career now.
Now, back in the day, it didn't really
matter that much, because just having
a degree made you special.
In 1960, around 8% of the population
had a bachelor's degree.
But today, that number's around 40%.
Having a college degree now is like having
a keyless entry in your car.
Everybody got it.
Ain't nobody care.
But in 1987, you was the man.
You had keyless entry in '87.
Beep, beep, hey, what you just did?
I locked my car. Do it again.
Beep, beep, beep.
Oh, shit!
You the devil!
That's magic!
So here's where we are, people.
We got people spending more money than ever
to get a degree that means less than ever,
which has left people looking for alternatives.
Some people are taking apprenticeships.
Some people are taking classes online.
And some employers are saying, hell,
we'll just train you ourselves.
In fact, Google has a $50 a month
education service that they've used
to place over 75,000 people into jobs at over 150
different companies.
Jobs that Google will soon replace with AI,
but that's not the point.
So, long story short, college is too expensive.
It doesn't help you get a job.
You can learn the same stuff on a computer
or in Iceland or Berlin.
Half the employers will train you for free.
This shit is the bigger scam than Bitcoin.
We should abolish college!
Y'all heard me!
[phone rings]
We got to abolish college, man.
Ain't messing around with top--
[phone rings]
Hey, Mama.
Yes, ma'am, I know you been in higher education for 40 years.
Mama, I know you marched.
You told me the stories.
I know you marched.
Yes, I'll put the diploma back on the wall.
Yes, I won't talk bad about college.
Yes, ma'am.
OK, side note.
College is necessary.
It broadens your horizons.
And in spite of its cost, I'm an absolutely better man
because of the degree and the invaluable lifelong
friendships I made along the way.
All right.
So, so, maybe we don't have to abolish college.
But we need to find a way for its benefits
to outweigh its costs.
Because if a four-year degree is going to leave you
with crippling debt and people not respecting the degree,
then maybe we all owe parking lot T-shirt man an apology.
Because it seems like we're all victims
of for profit education.