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Your Brain Gets Smart, but Your Head Gets Dumb

2020-07-31 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:44 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Everyday life (also: US politics & society) · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook, self promotion

Worried about US higher education, Hank argues it is hit by three things at once: decades of price rises driven by competition, a pandemic that makes all-online school less valuable, and a Republican and Trump-administration hostility partly fed by colleges' own elitism; he hopes it survives by bringing costs down.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank's worry about US higher education; prices rising faster than inflation for 40 years

  • ★★★ Hank says US colleges have raised prices faster than inflation for over 40 years: four years after aid would cost about $40,000 had it tracked inflation, but now costs over $90,000. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ Hank concludes that, almost by definition, college gets less worth it every year. — 00:00:00

00:00:42 — Online school worth less at the same price; Republican distrust of college; Trump administration moves against international students and universities

  • ★★★ Hank says college will be less valuable as an all-online experience, yet schools are not lowering prices. — 00:00:42
  • ★★★ Hank says a growing number of Americans think college is bad for the country: in 2016 the share of Republicans saying college has a negative effect rose from 37% to 58%. — 00:00:42 · Republican Party
  • ★★ Hank says the Trump administration is hurting universities: making it harder for international students to stay and having the Treasury investigate revoking nonprofit universities' tax-exempt status. — 00:00:42 · Donald Trump
  • ★★★ Hank says 23% of the money coming into US higher education comes from international students, often the only ones paying full price, so they subsidize Americans' education. — 00:01:11
  • ★★ Hank says the moves against international students look like another anti-immigrant measure but are both anti-immigrant and anti-education. — 00:01:11

00:01:40 — Colleges' elitism and rejection rates as part of the antagonism

  • ★★★ Hank says the antagonism toward higher education is complicated and historical, but part of it, not the whole, is that colleges are elitist and want to be elite institutions for elite students. — 00:01:40
  • ★★★ Hank calls it underexamined and pretty gross that the top metric of a school's quality is how many students it rejects. — 00:01:40
  • ★★ Hank says schools encourage students they know they will reject to apply, to keep acceptance rates low. — 00:01:40

00:02:23 — The three threats, hope that higher ed survives by cutting costs, Complexly's work, a fast change that must be careful

  • ★★★ Hank says higher education is the victim of three things: decades of hubris raising prices to compete, a pandemic that will decrease education's value, and an administration that doesn't care. — 00:02:23 · COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump
  • ★★★ Hank has hope: he thinks higher education will survive by accepting that it has done tremendous good while letting budgets balloon, competing like businesses for customers instead of educating students. (hedged) — 00:02:23
  • ★★★ Hank says the cost of higher education must not just stop rising but start coming down, and this is the chance to figure out how. — 00:02:23
  • ★★ Hank says Complexly thinks about this every day: its goal is free educational materials that make teaching cheaper and easier, plus bigger ideas like its partnership with Arizona State University. — 00:03:12 · Complexly
  • ★★★ Hank says we are at the very beginning of a change in how higher education works, which must be done thoughtfully and carefully though it has to happen quickly; that is why he is worried. — 00:03:12

00:03:41 — Sign-off: see you on Tuesday

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says online school is by definition less valuable than in-person school as a tendency: in person it is easier to hold attention, get non-verbal feedback and let classmates build relationships. — video description
  • ★★ The description says much of college's value lies outside the classroom, and if you are mostly paying for streaming video, $50,000 is too much. — video description
  • ★★ In a channel comment Hank clarifies he meant the rejection metric is under-discussed and under-criticized, not under-researched. — creator comment
  • ★ In a channel comment Hank says even a 50% acceptance rate is still way too low, and many state schools have low rates. — creator comment
  • ★ Answering a viewer asking why John posted no video on Tuesday, a channel comment says John is fine and just took the day off. — creator comment · John Green

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: higher education

Also: People: Donald Trump

Organizations: Arizona State University · Republican Party · United States Department of the Treasury

Concepts: acceptance rate · anti-intellectualism · distance education · inflation · international student

Places: United States

Events: COVID-19 pandemic

Only in the description or credits: All Star · Complexly

Also centred on higher education: College Advice From an Expert · Is College Worth It? · Why is College So Expensive? · Life is not a Job Training Program · US College Students Need Help · An Announcement 3 Years in the Making

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