It used to be a big deal to have a college education. Back in 1960, about 8% of the population had one and this chosen few deserved their popularity in the job market.
It used to be a big deal to have a college education. Back in 1960, about 8% of the population had one, and this chosen few deserved their popularity in the job market. The baby boomers decided this was unfair, so when they seized control of education in the ’70s and ’80s, they removed all the hard parts and rewarded themselves handsomely in the process.
Today, nearly four times as many Americans have degrees, despite students being expected to shell out upwards of $120,000 for a Mickey Mouse diploma that is totally useless in the real world. If you went to art school in the 1950s, you graduated knowing how to do photorealism with oils. If you got your art-school diploma last year, you graduated knowing how to put a tampon in a teacup. When education allows dissertations on Lord of the Rings, we end up with a culture where The New York Times sees nothing wrong with telling us to think of sanctuary cities as “where Keanu Reeves was trying to get to in ‘The Matrix’.”
How did we get here? Because people who say the following things are in charge of our education:
1. ERNEST HEMINGWAY IS NOT AN ERNEST HEMINGWAY EXPERT
In an American Literature class, the professor told us The Sun Also Rises was boring on purpose. Apparently, Hemingway was trying to capture Europe’s useless frivolity from the 1920s — or something. I had read elsewhere that Hemingway loved every minute of his time over there and when I said as much, the teacher replied, “In this class we go through the author’s intentions and into what the book actually was.”
What I learned: Hemingway should have taken a Hemingway class.
2. THE UNIVERSE IS 90% WATER
With the death of math came the arrogance of liberal arts. Suddenly, sociology professors were telling students about complex astronomy as if it was all common sense. In attempting to prove we are all the same, a professor uttered the above quote. I think she was headed for “humans are all 62% water” and took a sharp left turn at “I have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about.” As she rambled on, the rest of us sat back in our chairs and wondered things such as, “Wait, isn’t the universe 99.999% nothingness?”
What I learned: “Water” is loosely defined and can include gas, solids and antimatter.
3. YOU DON’T EXIST
Though I received a BA in English, I took a lot of math courses in college because it made my parents happy. These classes were rational for the most part, but one time our professor went off on a tangent about how we don’t exist.
He told us that when something is infinitely small, it is the mathematical equivalent to zero. When compared to the ever-expanding universe, he said we are infinitely small. Therefore, we don’t exist.
What I learned: The nine senses that insist we exist are full of shit.
4. OF COURSE, THIS IS ALL DONE WITH LASERS NOW; BACK THEN ALL WE HAD WAS A CATHODE RAY TUBE
This is the ONLY sentence I understood in a Philosophy of Science class where the professor mumbled unintelligibly like Uncle Monty for hours at a time.
My dad has a degree in physics and when I showed him some of our assignments, he ran to the Dean in a rage only to discover the senile old coot had created an impenetrable force field of tenure for himself and his entire department. “There’s not much I can do about that, Mr. McInnes,” the Dean told my old man. “It’s the Flat Earth Society over there.”
What I learned: Professors are always right and cannot be challenged by anyone, including their boss.
5. SEXISM CANNOT BE QUESTIONED
In a Philosophy of Feminism class (I know, I know) a young girl had the gall to put up her hand and say she grew up with six male siblings and never saw any kind of latent misogyny lurking around the male brain. Other students seemed excited about this idea and one asked, “If women do the same work for less money, why wouldn’t corporations hire them exclusively?”
The professor rolled his (yes, “his”) eyes and told us, “If you don’t accept that women are systematically and seriously oppressed in this society, you cannot be in this class.” The debate ended there.
What I learned: Women don’t choose the lives they lead and if they say they do, they’ve been brainwashed.
6. GRAFFITI ISN’T VANDALISM
It’s an expression. You see, the poor are muffled by the powers that be and have no choice but to scream their message from the brick walls that imprison them.
What I learned: If a restaurant owner pays $1,500 to replace the glass someone wrote their nickname on in etching cream, he is violating the First Amendment.
7. IT’S RACIST TO DISCUSS OVERPOPULATION
In an Environmental Science class I asked why we weren’t discussing overpopulation. Mother Nature can take a kick in the crotch from a few people, but when ever-expanding generations do it successively, she collapses. Unfortunately, you can’t criticize overpopulation without citing immigration as its cause, and lefties hate that. This is an issue that later split the Sierra Club in two and arguably started a civil war within the entire Green movement.
Back to Environmental Science: After asking my question, things got really weird. The professor implied I’m a racist. “Are you sure,” she asked with the tone of an aristocrat discussing cutlery blunders to one of her manservants, “you aren’t simply angry that it’s nonwhites who are, as you so deftly put it, ‘overpopulating?’” I actually was sure I didn’t mean that because I had no idea whitey was the only one not breeding.
What I learned: Math is racist.
8. ANDREW JACKSON LOVED KILLING INDIANS
About a year before he died, I heard Howard Zinn state those exact words during a talk in New York’s Cooper Union. I was catapulted back to the ’80s, when professors cherished his People’s History and happily digested every word as fact, even though every word was nothing more than a politician’s emotions. The Trail of Tears wasn’t pretty but it was just one of many battles that went on with at least 500 tribes over a total of 300 years. I didn’t learn that until way after I graduated.
What I learned: Our history is a bunch of drooling white sadists massacring innocent victims for sport.
9. PUTTING A FINGER IN SOMEONE’S EAR IS RAPE
Though this was taught in Women’s Studies, it was also a general understanding throughout the school. What started out as a way to destigmatize rape and encourage open discussion ultimately raped the word “rape” of all its meaning.
First we were told that there’s no difference between assault and rape. The latter only seems like a bigger deal because of the taboo. If you feel that way, I highly suggest you try being the victim of both and get back to me.
You back? The rape was a little more invasive, wasn’t it?
Then we were told a man needed explicit permission for every move during an amorous encounter. After you put your hand on her leg you are required to ask, “Are you OK with this?” The end result was that intercourse felt a lot more like child molesting than it did a normal adult sex act. Eventually, we were told any touching that wasn’t clearly greenlit was considered rape, even putting your finger in someone’s ear (something we had been calling a “Wet Willy” since kindergarten).
What I learned: I am a serial rapist.
10. IT’S OKAY TO HAVE AN ABORTION UP UNTIL A YEAR AFTER THE BABY IS BORN
Our Introduction to Philosophy professor was also the head of the Communist Party of Canada. He explained that the abortion debate hinges on when a fetus becomes human. Some say at conception; others will wait until the last trimester. He then argued one only becomes human when one displays “characteristics that do not include nonhumans.” Stay with me here: Monkeys can do everything an 11-month-old baby can do. They can feed themselves and move around the room and recognize faces. Therefore, a monkey is just as human as an 11-month-old. After about a year, the child’s capabilities surpass a monkey’s and thus it has no nonhuman peers. Only then can it be considered a human being.
What I learned: If you see a baby in a pram, it is perfectly ethical to walk over and brain it with a ball-peen hammer. If the mother starts screaming, she is clearly uneducated (poor woman).
Originally posted on
fact: dialogue and free speech are dead at canadian institutions of higher education (witness Coulter at U of Ottawa, Blatchford at U of Waterloo, etc). isn’t liberalism great? to bad it will defeat itself.
It’s even better when they get the TAs to come up and do a lecture. In first year, a TA just put up a picture of a lynched man, and began yelling at individual students in the room. Priceless (in the sense that it’s worthless).
Ha, English major. That explains a lot.
good ol’ carleton u.
that place is really boring now.
smug bullshit is what this is.
I am laughing with the truth of this piece.
The success of bullshit websites like this directly contributes to the watering down of higher education. My degree is in Electrical Engineering and what I learned in college was that the fucks studying Communications got more pussy than me.
C’mon no.thanks. Have a fucking laugh, will you?
funny stuff, but how many time are you going to tell that hemingway story??
btw, i know it’s fun to bitch about “boomers” fucking up education and everything else w/ their “everyone is a winner/we’re all unique/there is no right answer” shit, but the bottom line (rational) fact is that regardless of whether individuals can get by putting “tampons in a teacup”, the only people for whom that degree is not the equivalent of toilet paper are the people who worked their collective asses off while in school,blahblahblahblahblah
i went to a catholic university so they taught us fun things like why dan rather is the spawn of satan and that the real way dr’s are aborting babies is by shoveling their half alive bodies down garbage chutes while no one is looking. funtimes.
You majored in humanities. What the fuck did you expect?
What I learned: Political correctness is totally gay.
Senor no.thanks. is likely angry because he quite probably didn’t have a dad with a degree in physics to help him out, and I suspect it goes well beyond that: Mr. no.thanks. is, I believe he once mentioned, of the rather more negro persuasion, and so he most likely didn’t get to enjoy Gavin’s high-culture-advantaged, “Hi, I’m a well-spoken white, so no cops or other gangs are standing on my neck alla time” childhood. Etc. etc.
And then here comes Gavin, heedlessly dissin’ on those very same very highly significant educational opportunities that were silver-spooned into Gavin.
Yes, I agree that the modern liberal-arts University system has been majorly captured by overcorrecting-to-the-left doctrinaire idjit-professors & administrators. What could be more contrary to First Amendment axioms than ‘hate speech’ rules/laws? What morons are those who would support such? etc., end rant.
But in balance let’s not forget that U.S. universities of yore taught the injun-killin’, lobotomy-stickin’, Tuskeegee-experimentin’, McCarthy-supportin’ “professionals” of their times.
Vigilance, my friends. Vigilance and balance; not Faux-balance. And I beg Gavin heed the fellow who warned him that he is, of late, heading into straight stooge territory. It’s fun to play contrarian, until you have become that contrary. Then it’s a big fight to restore perspective.
xxoo, ya fags.
thanks for your humorous send up of college life circa 1990. for someone so stuck on boomers you sure seem to live in the past.
@ anita hill: exactly right.
i suppose this all goes to show how impressionable people are at college-age – gavin seems utterly fixated on his college experiences, just like goad is still angry about a fight he had with a SHARP in oregon 30 years ago.
you guys are out of touch with reality; if you are going to continue to be “writers,” i suggest you go out and have some new experiences.
maybe you should check out the new VICE show on MTV…it seems pretty outward looking.
The Judicious Hooker is a self-righteous prick; and what a pretentious link- he should date Imyar.
hahaha!!!
Gavin is fixated on his college experience from the 90′s because HE WENT TO FUCKING COLLEGE IN THE FUCKING 90′S, YOU FUCKING SELF-INVOLVED FUCKS. He can’t relate to you the ins and outs of going to college in the 00′s. He hasn’t had the privilege. Write your own fucking articles, dumbasses.
And stop acting like other people’s experiences from (gasp, gasp, horror, horror, gasp, gasp, horror) 20 years ago are irrelevant. They are. You know why? Because people from 20 years ago are still alive and have an effect on the world around them. Just as what happens to you, today, could, perhaps, leave an impression on your life and those around you, 20 years hence.
Perhaps, instead you should read this with a shred of curiosity, and put it into context. Then, realize this may explain some of the behavior of those empty human shells of yesteryear that insist on remembering things from two whole decades ago. Then use this information to take advantage of them. You are the only thing that matters.
Bathetically, the ever-crude Mr. Cunt is too busy self-fellating to notice that he’s also regularly giving himself the ol’ Tom The Cat facial treatment.
“I observe there is in Mr. Hooker no affected language; but a grave, comprehensive, clear manifestation of reason”
I go to college now, and let me tell you something, this bullshit still goes on.
Love this Gavin, thanks!
totally true. but a tampon in a teacup is better than a tampon in your mouth.
“Unfortunately, you can’t criticize overpopulation without citing immigration as its cause, and lefties hate that.”
Professor McInnes, isn’t immigration an *effect* of overpopulation? What about lack of education about, and access to, birth control? Or just lack of education in general? What about cultural or religious dogma that encourages people to have lots and lots of babies?
Obviously, the most important part has been overlooked here:
Water *can* include gas, solids, and antimatter. Don’t be a dick. (Although I guess it would be “anti-water,” or something.)
Also, I had a history professor who insisted that the term “manual labor” was derived from the fact that men have traditionally been laborers in human society. Because, you know, “man-ual” labor. I told him I thought it had to do with whatever the Latin was for “hand.”
He pulled me aside after class and told me I was wrong and he was right.
this is just like Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School
unbelievable! can’t believe that you were taught these 10 things. in college no less.
man, ya’ll are a trip. this just reads like something Ann Coulter would seriously run with (and make an ass of herself on Fox), only this is trying to operate as satire. The major issue I have with the writing is that it’s on the idea that you were actually “taught” these things instead of just hearing/seeing a few loons spout total bullshit. If you were taught these things, then, I would argue that those ideas became a part of your world view. Instead, we have an article where you making a go at poking fun at the strange things you’ve seen and heard through out your education. I cant agree with the idea that Gavin can make a hardline judgement on the state of liberal arts education when he is basing it on his string of experiences from ONE perspective. This article could have been more effective if the angle of approach were shifted and Gavin did not specifically target American culture. He went to Carlton University in Ottawa Canada.
Fuck it, I’m taking this too seriously.
Cast-Irony Skillet = The Judicious Hooker; end of.
“I go to college now, and let me tell you something, this bullshit still goes on.”
The difference now is all the professors are 10 times more out of touch with the real world.
Whoa ho ho! Cunticles is all a-glow about his miniscule powers of deduction — he must’ve attended Gavin-type schools, eh? $100k to learn what is an asymptote.
I’ve got a degree in experimental physics and a degree which qualifies me to teach physics from two top British universities. I’ve never had a single experience like the 10 Gavin had. Some universities and some degrees are serious and maybe most of the rest aren’t. Maybe Gavin was taking the wrong classes at the wrong university? I don’t know, but I find it hard to believe that I’m the only one who had a serious education. Oh and guess what? I didn’t pay a penny in tuition fees for the two degrees I was awarded over 5 years in the UK and before you ask, neither did my rich parents.
That English professor needs to shut the fuck up and read some GG Cantor and learn some shit about infinitesimals. He ruined Gavin for life – I’ve heard Gavin do this riff three or four times now, and it’s so factually errant that it is a little painful – and then he goes to that “explain it to girls” riff on Zeno – as though Cantor (or even Aristotle, kinda) didin’t wash Zeno’s Conjecture all the way up.
I”m not mad – i’m just hungover and that shit makes it worse.
holy fuck. i need to drop out and start a blog
Every one of you uni fucks should do yourselves a favor and just get a trade, then work to live not live to work. Do the good stuff on the side and fund it yourself. pussies. TTYL
@ The Judicious Hooker: I liked you better as Rolodex of Grotesques.
First rate good man, first rate. I had the sense to NOT go to university and pick up a trade or two… Don’t regret it in the least. And I can still hold drunken bonfireside pseudo-philosophical conversation with the best of my university educated peers. Why? Because reading BOOKS is where the money’s at. Having a library is a much better use of the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to not get a job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILLc03tNtFE&feature=fvw
@ Eine Kleine Arsemusik
blanket hating on hipsters is bad. but blanket hating on college profs is good. hypocrite??? yeah i do think this is intended to be taken generally.
@ Eine Kleine Arsemusik
Well I liked you better when you were a green-suited Junior Elf (with ears) playing clarinet for the Montclair High School Xmas road-show concert at the Willowbrook Mall, and how Peggy Groskopf almost kissed you but ended up going off with that smirky pop-collared snare drummer in the nutckracker soldier uniform. Then, to cap it all off, Vinni ruined everyone’s weekend when he bought that grade-Z blow.
This really is bullshit. My sisters went to school in the 90′s and really didn’t deal with anything like that. I just graduated and didn’t deal with anything like that, and I got a degree in political science, which I would assume would be where the largest effort to indoctrinate students to “The Left” would be. I am pretty left wing, and I had some really conservative teachers who gave me A’s when my point was backed by a rational fact based argument. Maybe you guys should have picked a better school.
@The Jersey Cavil: Yeah, that WAS a pretty terrible night!
Donald Sutherland looks and dresses like he belongs in Williamsburg circa 2010
good article, but it actually IS true that “you” don’t exist, because what “you” know as “you” is just an illusion
Not “their nickname”, a nickname they gave themselves.
Cool story bro.
Entertaining article, but “Bullshit” has a good point.
“Unfortunately, you can’t criticize overpopulation without citing immigration as its cause”
i’m sure this has been mentioned but yes you fucking can
“…and lefties hate that.”
10/10 would be trolled again
“The Trail of Tears wasn’t pretty but it was just one of many battles that went on with at least 500 tribes over a total of 300 years. I didn’t learn that until way after I graduated.”
…learn what? you stated a fact that is known by every human
Some of you guys are taking this a little too seriously, aren’t you? Quoting stuff that was obviously sarcasm and taking it at face value. Are you for cereal? Seems like a big joke to me lol, and a damn good one. So calm the fuck down and have a laugh instead of criticizing. They never said that this happened in every college class in the world, just to them.
This guy will never make it to the TV before it dies because he can’t hide the auld cocaine well enough. Every time he’s on camera he tweaks his nose like every five seconds. It’s annoying and gay.
1/x = 0
as x approaches infinity
Cool story bro is the new I just flew in and boy are my arms tired.
and boy are my hams tired.
Bahahahahahaha! Whoop! Heeeehehehehehehe Ahahahahahaha…Buttsex did you learn that also? Did you learn about Vaginas back then?
Only care enough to defuse two of these dirty bombs from the douceh jihad.
1) “Overpopulation…. Math is racist.”
It’s called the “Demographic Transition”:
WHEN people have the stabiliy and opportunities that NOT being poor provides, THEN they have less kids. Overpopulation does not cause poverty, it’s the other way around.
How did you pass anything?
2) Are you implying Andrew Jackson ec. did not kill a bunch of Indians or that it just doesn’t matter to you? Sounds like the later.
I dislike the british commenters. They ruined the vice website.
Cool story Drippy Dog Dix and Cum Bubbles.
Actually, while human infants and non-human primates have pretty comparable cognitive abilities in terms of things like cause/effect and tool-use, they far outperform non-human primates on the more social aspects of cognition, such as test batteries that observe empathy, communication, object identification (which is considered one of the precursors for moral reasoning), and “theory of mind” tests that test understanding of the intentions and goals of others.
This article is really really good either way you look at it.
Pity about the weird commenters who seem to take everything personally / jealously, but hey its the internet.
Im gonna buy the book of these writings when theyre all strung together and bound in book-form.
Comments I liked upstairs as follows (before i stopped reading them)
‘Chiefcuster’ with “…write your own fucking articles, dumbasses.”
&
Whoever it was that wrote “british peoples comments ruin websites” because that was a cool thing to say.
I will definately come back to this article, it was good
I loved college. It morally and financially bankrupted me but it kept me the fuck out of the last three wars, told me why I love to have anal sex, and allowed me the right to walk out of every shitty minimum wage job that tries to break your body and soul. I grew up with old men who limped when they walked and picked up cups of coffee with the three remaining fingers they had. Or woke up screaming with the vision of the Germans, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese, soldiers and civillians they had killed or they friends they had seen dying in the mud. Not to mention the women and children who have to clean up the mess that gets left behind. Guarantee you that all of them, the living and the dead, would have loved to lived to have gone to college. Sometimes you assholes are so off the mark and just puppets.
Have you ever read any Sigmund Freud?
He’s the biggest crock of shit since leeching. Freud has as much factual evidence behind his theories as scientology and thetans yet he’s worshipped in English departments.
Passing off Freud as legitimate is evidence for how much bullshit college is.
@ FUCK YOU DAD!
So you grew up with WWII, Vietnam, and Korean War vets all at the same time? Was your school the VFW?
And didn’t you hear?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill
Yeah,but in The Departed,Freud said that the Irish have magical anti-psychoanalysis powers. Oooohhhh…
Why is that whenever you read an article (other than this one) about how bad university graduates have it, they don’t differentiate between fine arts/arts/commerce/science etc. I hate when I’m 2/3 of the way through some gay ass article about how some fuckers can’t get a job in their field and have had to move back in with their parents, only to find: chosen field is “drama instructor.”
For the last fucking time, If you are taking an arts degree and have no plans to be a lawyer/doctor, quit now. If you are in fine arts, I reckon competition for art teachers at the local elementry school (where you will be teaching geography too) is going to fierce, let alone for university jobs. And at that pay, is it worth the loans?
you discovered that Universities tend to be liberal? an English major no less? this is like an amazing parody of heavy insights. you’re like the older dude who cruises teenage parking lots on “de-indoctrinazation” missions… “HEy Kids, you know all that shit about “feminism” and all that shit.. it’s all PC bullshit. No, go ahead have a beer. It’s cool….”
college is gay but you don’t take any of those classes if you major in electrical engineering
I attended a university in America known by most of its students and alumni as “State.” Early in my freshman year I sat down with my English advisor to discuss the importance of a college degree from State in attaining a meaningful career.
I can’t remember his first name, but I do remember that he had a red beard, a Scottish McSomething surname and a predilection for turquoise belt buckles and bracelets. He was extremely proud to be 1/30 Native American, and acted as if the other 29th were a genetic burden. The course I took with him was titled “Radical Ecology”
Me: “So, what can I expect to do with this degree once I graduate and head to the, ya know, real world. I’m interested in journalism and publishing. What does someone do with this degree? What are my prospects?”
Him: (Long pause) “The real world? (Looks out window) “Well, to be honest, I wouldn’t know. I don’t live there.”
Sorry to tell you this, but the things that you were taught are all wrong.
College has a Liberal bias because Liberals are smarter than you idiots. What was the last thing a conservative invented, the beer-can windchime? For christ’s sake, NASA is filled with Liberals, not to mention almost every scientist, environmentalist, and billionaire in America. Get your heads out of your asses.
If what you say is true, “BongBong,” why do they make such a grand display of pretending to represent the poor and underprivileged?
“If what you say is true, “BongBong,” why do they make such a grand display of pretending to represent the poor and underprivileged?”
Because they do?