If you were at university president Harvard, Yale, Stanford, one of these places, and you had some secret fantasy of getting lunched and you wanted a coalition of alumni, students, faculty to come after you, you'd give a speech saying, we are giving such a great education.

We're going to increase the enrollment, we're going to let more people in, we're going to double or triple our enrollment over the next 20 or 30 years, since we're serving the whole world.

In 1970, we were 200 million people in the US, now they're 8 billion in the world, it's 40 times many people, we're just going to double our enrollment, and you would get lunch because people understand it is a zero sum tournament.

It's not a positive sum education, it's not about education, it's a studio 54 nightclub you're running.

And for what that is, it can be pretty robust for a long time.

There's probably some point where it gets so deranged that-

I mean we're effectively there, I honestly have to say that where we are now, there's a brilliant novel out, I've interviewed the author on my radio program, Scott Johnston, it's called Campus Land, and it is brilliant, it's a brilliant criticism lampooning of the whole world.

I've been a culture but generally higher ed, and you see that it eats itself at some point, we're kind of at that point, how long can it sustain itself?

Again, I say the same thing about the New York Times, New York Times has value because people say it has value, but when you really look at these places, at some point the word has to get out to the alumni, to the parents, it's not as good as it used to be, it's not what it once was, somehow that-

I mean you have to allow that it's possible to have that kind of a, we can call it a market correction, it has to be possible.

And I would have predicted 30, 40 years ago, so it's been harder, I'm not saying like next decade I think they may finally break this decade, but it's probably something about the student debt that's unsusainable, we have 300 billion in 2000, it's up to 1.7 trillion today, so I think there are certain trends that I can't see going on for another decade, even so I think something is going to break-

Isn't it a little bit like the Soviet Union?

It's not so clear. It isn't a little bit like the Soviet Union, I mean at some point it has to break down, at some point the truth will out, so the fact that it could go on for seven decades is horrifying, but it did end, you know, and I guess I wonder, because I wouldn't have said that 100 years ago, Yale and all these places were corrupt, lost, leading young people, astray, I don't think it was true, I think it's something that's more recently true, or it's a kind of a

flower that has finally come to bloom, we know that Yale was going, a lot of these schools were going in those directions already in the 20s and the 30s, but it didn't really come into the mainstream, so you have the madness that you're seeing until now, so I guess it seems to me that it will take a while, but it has to fall apart, and I was I'm not sure how they can sustain it.

I think the overall system can't be sustained because of the runaway debt, the top parts of it, it's possible, it can just keep going because it's exclusive, and this is what drives it, I think, I think, I have the sort of theory that one of the reasons Republican political leaders, senators, Congressmen, governors aren't going after the universities more, is because they still just want their kids to go to the top schools.

So if you were a senator or a person who was in this room, by the way, or a lawyer, and we had this crazy college admissions thing where people can get in through the front door or the back door or the side door, and I think all these places, there's probably some number even at Harvard or Stanford, if you make this number, your kid can get in, no matter how unqualified your child is, I think it's something like $25 million.

And I think it would be helpful to publicize these things, but the fact that there are people who are doing this suggests it's going to keep going for some time, and it's, yeah, it's.

But it is, I mean, I know what you mean, and I fear you may be right, but I'm still thinking that because we're talking about this, people hadn't been talking about this, it seems we've arrived at a point where it's possible some people will see this.

And if you see what is happening at these colleges, it's dramatically different.

I mean, when I was at Yale in the 80s, it was hard for the alumni to know the lunacy of political correctness that we were living out.

It was hard for them to get it, but now, because of the way the world is, because of social media, I don't mean to bring up a sort of subject, but we have to talk about social media.

But it seems to me that people can see things that they wouldn't have been able to see even 30 or 40 years ago, but that's a larger conversation.

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