He made the comment to The Daily Wire’s Amanda Prestigiacomo when she asked him about Bill Maher’s recent rant against free college.  Here’s Rowe:

The “Dirty Jobs” host said that he believes that “making taxpayers pay the tuition of those who wish to attend a university” is “profound unfairness,” adding that such a point has been made by others better than he could make it.

“I want people to radically rethink higher education,” Rowe continued. “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.’”

Information technology has made learning so easy to do on an as-needed basis, that the only rationale for college degrees that are not direct training for specific jobs is that they teach one how to think.  As my post about the North Korea defector this morning suggests, that sort of education is not guaranteed on American campuses.  It may not even be something that can be expected anymore.

Thus, forcing everybody to pay for four years of adolescent daycare and indoctrination is harmful all around.

Everybody needs skin in the game.  The institutions must face the need to prove their worth, and students must be forced to make the cost-benefit analysis for themselves.

Featured image by Dom Fou on Unsplash.