Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk spoke with Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow on Thursday, where he explained why college is a scam. “These are hedge funds with schools attached. These are not colleges,” Kirk affirmed.
“I think the de-stigmatization of people that don’t go to college is necessary,” Kirk told Marlow, before offering a few statistics that he reveals in his newly released book, The College Scam.
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The Turning Point USA founder explained that “forty percent of people that enter a four-year college drop out,” which means that “only 60 percent of people that actually enroll will end up graduating.”
“If any other business operated that way, it would be closed down as a scam,” he said.
Kirk added that on top of the 40 percent chance of dropping out, among those who do graduate and get a job, another 40 percent will end up getting a job that does not require a college degree. Moreover, another 25 percent will actually get a job in the field in which they studied.
“Just to put this into concrete numbers, there’s about 23 million college students in America right now,” Kirk said. “Only about 4.5 to 5 million out of that 23 million will end up graduating, getting a job in a field in which they studied, and getting a job that actually requires a college degree.”
“And if that’s not already bad enough, these universities are raising tuition every single year, and if you combine Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and the top endowments of the top ten schools, they have a combined, tax-free endowment assets of over $230 billion,” he added.
“These are hedge funds with schools attached. These are not colleges,” Kirk affirmed.
Kirk explained what he meant by colleges being “hedge funds with schools attached”:
A lot of good, middle-class parents have to go significantly into debt to send their kids to Princeton or Harvard or Stanford. But what they don’t know is that these universities are sitting on Ukraine relief-style amount of cash. We’re talking about $50 billion that Harvard is sitting on, $45 billion that University of Texas at Austin is sitting on.
These are what they call their endowments. Now, they don’t use their endowments to significantly curb tuition. They use it to buy more buildings adjacently, and they use it to grow the real estate portfolio, and the entire asset pool of the university. It’s all about power. It’s about the people that sit on the board, it’s about the money management, it’s about the unethical deals that are being traded.
“You have this huge sum of money, and what do parents get out of it? Basically nothing,” Kirk said. “They might do some scholarships here and there, but generally, their whole goal is to grow their endowment year over year. That alone is cause for concern.”
Kirk added that a parent might come to the realization:
Hold on a second, you’re trying to tell me my kid has a 40 percent chance of dropping out, if he graduates, almost 50/50 chance of getting a job that doesn’t require a college degree, and then the university has made my family go into debt, and my kid might have to borrow money and be filled with ideas that are against my values, and is also hoarding cash, and tells me that I have to pay more money?
“Scam, Alex. That would be a scam,” Kirk said.
The Turning Point USA founder added that just because his new book is called The College Scam does not mean he is anti-education.
“I believe this is the most pro-education book that you will read this entire year,” Kirk said. “I believe deeply in reading serious books. I believe deeply in a learned population. That’s why I hate college. They’re not doing any of that at many colleges.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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