I think universities facilitate it because you can go to university to not be something instead of going to university to be something and and that's it's pleasure island and the price you pay for it especially in the u.s. is debt and your enticed into it because the administrators can pick your pocket so they 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 u.s. it's indentured servitude and it is play it's 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 there are 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 that 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 eighteen to twenty when I was a kid roughly speaking the kind of rough patch for four for life is 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 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
go have to work for a corporation and get a salary for the rest of my life you know and then I'll just end up in it 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 it's just it's it's there's a space now in our culture that that is lacking for people to make that transformation from from adolescence into adulthood and so it's just it's it's the cost of that is
for stalled 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 is so because scarcity matters obviously the second thing is is that the match between the degree in the work place 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 there 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 and even it feels 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 they the guy had to pay play devil's advocate we were talking about Bill c16 I thought Jesus that's so pathetic I'm talking about legal matters and I'm into what greatest even 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 I 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 anyways because lawyers 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 come out and say you're 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
