Lifelong Debt Coming To A Theatre Near You

 

 

I think we all agree that college is very important.  Where else can a young adult learn how to binge drink on taxpayer money?

Of course, I'm joking. College is a place of real learning, like learning how all Republicans are EVIL, your parents are stupid, and Stalin was a good listener.

Except, of course, in the College of Business, where my son was stationed for four odd years.  I'm not sure what he learned there. He understands this basic business principle: you have to make money. But, unfortunately, this concept seems to have escaped his peers, a couple of which have been elected to Congress.

I could rant and rave about college all day. It is a necessary evil in the world. We need to have a place where we can warehouse intelligent young people so they don't come around us.

Seriously, we need a place to train doctors, engineers, architects, and even lawyers.  I might be generous and grant that we need a place to train school teachers, although I will point out I was taught to read by my mother, a high school dropout. (It was the Depression, and there was cotton to chop.)

I'm sure we don't need a School of Film-Making or whatever it is at Columbia University.

Columbia University is an Ivy League School in Manhattan. It is the only Ivy League school down the street from Tom's Diner, which has such fancy-schmancy clientele as Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported, "Recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000."   According to my Kennesaw State education, the critical word is "median".  Median means middle, which means some of the graduates' debt is lower, but some are higher.

This is a two-year program. I thought I'd throw that in.

The Wall Street Journal goes on to say, "Yet two years after earning their master’s degrees, half of the borrowers were making less than $30,000 a year."

You would think having the words "Columbia University" on your resume would bring more scratch.

 I mean, you could go to Kennesaw State University Film School, if they had one, for probably a quarter of the amount and still get a job that makes less than $30,000 a year.

I know because when I graduated Kennesaw State, with my history degree, I had people lined up to hire me at Amway.

I eventually fell into an office job with an insurance company, where I stayed for 17 years until the office was closed. But, of course, by that time, we were a different insurance company.

While it wasn't my dream job of driving a history truck, it allowed me to make some money to pay off my student loans, get married, buy a house, and have a child.

The Wall Street Journal said, "There’s always those 2 a.m. panic attacks where you’re thinking, ‘How the hell am I ever going to pay this off?’ " said 29-year-old Zack Morrison, of New Jersey, who earned a Master of Fine Arts in film from Columbia in 2018 and praised the quality of the program. His graduate school loan balance now stands at nearly $300,000, including accrued interest. He has been earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year from work as a Hollywood assistant and such side gigs as commercial video production and photography."

After three years, his graduate school loan balance is almost $300,000.00.  What a nightmare!

Well, Zack, unless you create another "Star Wars" (hey, it is possible), I don't think you will be able to pay off that loan making $30K-50k a year. 

Do you know who will pay for it?

The kid who went into the Army, the kid that became a plumber, the kid that opens up a hair salon, the kid who got a "worthless degree" and found a job anyway, the kid that became a teacher, the kid that drives a truck, that's who will pay off this loan eventually.

Who is at fault?

Columbia is, of course. They see this as a revenue stream. They don't see students. They see dollar signs.   

The students are at fault too.  Nobody really knows what it takes to make it in the entertainment industry.  I'm not sure you can teach it at college, but I know it doesn't cost $300 grand a year.

So, kids, you ain't Spielberg.  I know film is your "passion," but you also have a "passion" to eat. That is unless you have an extra $300,000.00 laying around.  

 

 

Grading Joe

 

 

Welcome to a new feature of Humor Me!  Whenever you see the above picture, you know it will be an "opinion" piece. This means I am giving an "opinion" which may/may not be grounded in facts and logic. But, and here comes the tricky part, it is what I think. Your mileage may differ.

I put the above paragraph in because I will be grading the 46th President of The United States, Joseph "Joe" Biden.

I will admit I've been pretty tough on President Joe. But, you have got to understand something: I've been following him, on and off, since I was in eighth grade. In other words, I've been aware of Joe Biden as long as I've been aware of "Smoke On The Water." (Which I give an "A" for awesome guitar licks and "F" for lyrics.  "Swiss time was running out")

I have seen him at his worse: his take down of Judge Bork and the way he handled the Clarence Thomas nomination.  While he is not the cause of the toxicity around our public conversation, he's done his share of mess which causes those on the other side of the river (um, me) not to trust his claims of bipartisanship.

But people say he's a nice guy. I know Zell Miller loved him.

First of all, President Joe's grade is an "I" for incomplete. This is because he's only been in for a couple of months and has a couple of years to go. But here are some preliminary grades.

I would give him an "A" for lowering the temperature from the Trump era.  Every day was something with Trump: a tweet, someone fired, yelling at somebody.  It was just a circus every day.

A lot of it was Trump's fault. He is combative by nature, and he was used to getting his way. He always sounded like he was holding a "town hall" at one of his companies and he was taking away "causal Fridays" because the employees didn't meet their arbitrary goal.

Plus, plenty of people in the media at large saw Trump as an American Mussolini who must be stopped. Therefore, if Trump said the sky was blue, CNN would say the sky was red and have a panel of eight "experts" explaining why.

It's not that way now. The mainstream media got their orange whale and Joe's more in line with their thinking.

On messaging, I give Biden a "C-."   Even with all of the non-Fox news organizations and entertainment industry with him, I have found his message to be messy and garbled.

For example, Biden made wearing a mask a big deal.  He was even putting on two masks in a room where everyone was vaccinated.  Then, a couple of days later, it was okay to go nude face if you're vaccinated. Then he's in England, wearing the mask again and doing the elbow bump.

His administration made a big whoop-de-do about saving 16 cents at your Fourth of July picnic without mentioning you're paying almost a dollar more in gas. 

His speeches have been, at best, bland.  His whispering messages are just bizarre.  "Pay people more," he whispered a  few weeks ago, I guess, to small business owners who can't find enough help post-pandemic. But, of course, why didn't they think of that?  That brilliance only comes with being the President of The United States.

The cabinet gets a generous "B".  I don't agree with 95% of what comes out of the President's cabinet, but they are Democrats, and that's what you will get. In addition, you will get the goofball leftist statements like the condo collapse in Florida was due to "climate change".

Policy:  "D+".   I'm a semi-libertarian Republican conservative old man.  I'm not going to agree with the administration on a lot of things. The border is a mess, and it is pretty obvious the migrants saw Biden's election as an invitation to come on up.  Gas prices are up, and there's no indication he gives a flying flip.  The Middle East, OY! What can you say?   I'll give Biden credit for not being kissy-face with Putin, but he is scared of Xi Jinping.  Nobody knows how Biden will react if Xi invades Taiwan.  

On regular political stuff, I'll give Biden a "C".   I think I am right to be skeptical of his bipartisanship. He seems to be very concerned with his progressive flank instead of the more moderate parts of his party and country.  While I think he went overboard with the masks, overall he did a good job with keeping the focus on getting the vaccine.  I think it is interesting that one of the first things Mr. Union Label did in office was kill the Keystone pipeline which killed union jobs. 

One the elephant in the room, Team Biden seems like they are managing Joe pretty well.  He hasn't wandered away from The White House. (That we know of.)  However, he has wandered from the script  that would have sent up flares in the Reagan administration. ("I have never been particularly poor at calculating how to get things done in the United States Senate. So the best way to get something done, if you, if you hold near and dear to you that you like to be able to, anyway,”)   So, it is going to be interesting to see how well he holds up doing the coming years.  I'm still betting he won't run for re-election.