College is a Pyramid Scheme
But We Can't Quit it
True story. My husband and I — two PhDs, who loved school so much that we stayed in graduate school until our mid-30s — did not save for our own children’s college education.
We basically had no money to put away for their college education due to the delayed employment issue. One of our kids has autism, so college was always a long shot anyway. However, the real reason that we didn’t create a 529 for them was that we didn’t think college would exist in 18 years.
When I was a regular contributor to the Atlantic, I wrote many articles about the problems with academia. I wrote about paywalls on academic research, horrific adjunct exploitation, and ridiculous salaries of college presidents. When I was writing those pieces, I spent a lot of time explaining basic terms like adjunct professor. People had no clue.
Nowadays, families know that college is too expensive and that their kids could be getting a better education, but they’re still sending their kids off to college like lemmings. Some of those colleges now have a six-figure yearly price tag. Because what are the alternatives?
Because we didn’t have a 529 for Jonah, he has student loan debt, and we’re paying off a home equity loan. He may have gotten a subpar education, especially since it happened during COVID, but his degree means that he won’t be weeded out by the bots on Indeed.
At this point, I’m just happy that people know what’s going on and that there is some pushback.
During lunch every day, I do laps around the cemetery across the street from my new office and listen to podcasts.
Yes, I live a glamorous life. You wish you were me.
Today, Prof G was on my headphones, and he talked about his gig as an adjunct professor at NYU. I’m going to post large quotes below. I never do this, but it’s good.
“I think academia is a wonderful career. It's definitely a caste system, it's definitely some of the most discriminatory business in the world.
Essentially, the people in charge hire their Ph.D. buddies. They write bullshit research, which is 98% of peer-reviewed academic research is this bullshit to give each other citations such that they can qualify.
They can get tenure, which is guaranteed lifetime employment, which translates to student debt. As two-thirds of these individuals within 20 years are totally unproductive and overpaid. And tenures is kind of this grift where because Galileo said the world might be round and we thought we need to protect academics, we've decided that the guy who came up with Gap One Accounting in 1985 deserves lifetime employment.
It's just fucking stupid. The result is a crowding at the top of the pyramid, and young academics who are really outstanding have trouble moving up because these people will not leave. And most of this, quote unquote, tenure is nothing but a gild and a tax on young people, which translates to student debt.”
“You're probably not going to do great peer-reviewed research. I was thinking about doing peer-reviewed research and then I read it. I'm like, this is stupid….
Scott negotiated with NYU to get a higher salary. I never did that, but I wish I did.
I was always the highest-rated professor in every department where I taught. I always had full classes. Every seat was filled. Sometimes, students begged me to sign a form for a course overload, so they could get a seat in my class. That happened in some places where I made McDonald’s wages. That is why I thought that college wouldn’t exist when my kids turned 18.
And so I could put 500 butts and seats every year, which at $7,000 per class, which is what we charge at NYU Stern, you're technically generating $3.5 million in income.
They're paying you a lot less than that. But you have some currency. So the key for you, my friend, is just becoming outstanding at teaching and getting more butts and seeds…
“My career took off when I decided I was going to do nothing. I was never going to spend any time on campus unless I was teaching. To do a market check, and what you do is you quit every three to five years without quitting.
Every three to five years, I would interview at another university. I'd get called by a Cornell or a Wardner or Columbia. I'd interview, I'd find out what the offer would be, and then I'd go to the dean or my department chair and say, I don't want to leave, I'd be transparent, but this is my current value in the marketplace.
I knew I had some currency because fortunately for me, the marketing department was not very strong in terms of in-room teaching, and they would match it. You got to recognize that the leadership of universities generally sees adjuncts and clinicals as sort of, I don't know, like Russian soldiers that they just kind of throw into the meat grinder, and that is, oh, it's your calling. You don't actually need health benefits or money.”
“We save that for the tenured faculty. So you have to create your own currency through butts and seats, and then you have to leverage it by occasionally interviewing with another university. That's kind of the politics of how the sausage is made.
Having said that, you generally are in an environment where people are not assholes. They fight over every little thing because they're so little at risk, or they're so little to be gained. But generally speaking, the people are pretty nice.
The best academics are some of the most inspiring people you ever run across. Being on campus is incredibly inspiring. You do feel as if you're adding value.
Being around young people is just incredibly invigorating. But let me finish where I started.
A lot there, a lot there.
A lot of trauma, a lot of PTSD, but a lot of reward too.”
From The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway: The Future of Prof G Media, How We Make the Podcast, and Why Scott Became a Professor, Aug 25, 2025
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More of Me
Watching: BritBox, because I love eccentric English people solving murder mysteries. Check out Ludwig. Autism overlap. Also, Outrageous.
Travel: Lake George and NYC
Maybe, but a major cause of the high price of a college education is the vast crowd of administrators brought in over the last decades. When my father started teaching in the mid-20th c. There were faculty, a department chair (one of the faculty), a Dean, and office support. Now there are any number of administrators who get paid more than faculty.
It is remarkable that the college racket has lasted this long, isn't it?