So You Have a College Diploma (Academia as the next big scam?)

Iowahawk explains the value of that piece of paper.

But why dwell on the costs? As college studies show, a college diploma is a bargain at any price! Oh sure, four to seven years ago you could have taken out a $200,000 loan and bought a nice starter house, or a new Ferrari. But where would that leave you today? With a four to seven year old Ferrari, that's where. Instead you have this priceless diploma signifying your wise financial choice to put your debt where your brain is, and hot rod that sucker with the latest nitro-fueled, supercharged academic knowledge this side of Jacques "Big Daddy" Derrida. That knowledge hurtled you down the quarter mile at Deconstruction Valley Dragways and now you claim the prize - this diploma naming you as Top Patriarchy Eliminator. And unlike a Ferrari, no repo man will ever load your knowledge on a flatbed and haul it away - even if he wanted to.

Yes, some of you may have invested your cash in pursuing mercenary "professional" degrees, like engineering and nursing and accounting, with their tedious emphasis on "right" answers and "employment." Some of those graduates aren't even here, because they'd rather be working at their new jobs than joining us in this celebration of the life of the mind. Happily though, the majority of you came to this university to learn how to think, not what to think. You learned how to speak truth to power, and how to question authority. If you were hungover for the big Questioning Authority midterm, you learned how to plead the TA for an extra-credit paper, topic of his choosing, and how he wanted it worded. You learned how everything can be deconstructed and critiqued, with the exception of Deconstruction and Critical Theory.

Read the whole thing ... and weep. Who ever thought that academia would turn out the be the next big scam?