With record unemployment, skyrocketing tuition, and stagnating wages, America has finally learned that college is a scam. But if you were paying attention, Kanye West called it out first back in 2004 with his debut album: College Dropout.

“The name of my album is called The College Dropout,” [Kanye] said of his debut. “All that’s saying is make your own decisions. Don’t let society tell you, ’This is what you have to do.’”
– Interview with MTV

Tuition went crazy high
Everyone believed that you needed college to get a good job. So the government started giving out huge amounts of money for college… with a catch: you could never get rid of that college debt by bankruptcy. So colleges knew they had what people thought was necessary, billions of dollars from the government, and the students had to pay it back no matter what. So colleges jacked up the price. Prices rose 300-400% over ten years.
What were people going to do? NOT go to college? All the successful people before them had gone to college. But people didn’t realize yet that the internet changed everything (more on this in a moment).
The actual degrees are useless
A liberal arts, humanities, or gender studies degree qualifies you for a job at Starbucks. Ask the barista what their degree is in, and it’s almost never Computer Science or Engineering. Colleges are pretending like all degrees are equally valuable. Art degree graduates only make 29% more than high school diploma holders while engineering grads make 138% of what high school grads do.

No one cares about your college experience
Not a single person cares about your college experience after you get a “real job”. Even in our language, we refer to life after college as the “real world” because we all know college is nonsense.
As Kanye puts it:

after all the partying and crazing,
And don’t forget about that drug habit you picked up at school being around your peers!
– School Spirit (skit 1)

I’m 37. If I ever mentioned what I learned in college to a prospective client or employer, they’d rightly laugh me out of the room. No employer wants to hear about where you lost your virginity.
And it’s not just because that was 15 years ago either. I could talk about a programming project I had at my first programming job to illustrate how experienced I was.
Colleges love to sell the idea that you need even MORE college to succeed

You pick up all those books that you’re gonna read and not remember
And you keep it rolling man
You get that associates degree, okay?
Then you get your bachelor’s degree
Then you get your masters
Then you get your masters, masters
Then you get your doctrine
– School Spirit (Skit 2)

“But you need college to make money!”

• Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft: Dropped out of college
• Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook: Dropped out of college
• Steve Jobs, Found of Apple: Dropped out of college
• Jack Dorsey, Founder of Twitter: Dropped out of college
• Mark Cuban, Owner of Dallas Mavericks: Never went to college
• Daymond John, CEO of FUBU: Never went to college
• Evan Spiegel, CEO/co-founder of Snapchat: Dropped out of college
• Kanye West: Dropped out of college

Sure some people went to college and succeeded. See if you can spot the trend:

• Peter Thiel, Co-founder of PayPal: B.A. Philosophy
• Elon Musk, Founder of Tesla: B.S. Physics
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Founders of Google: B.S. Computer Science
• Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon: B.S. Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
• Brian Acton, Co-founder of WhatsApp: B.S. Computer Science
• Pierre Omidyar, Founder of eBay: B.S. Computer Science

That’s right, our economy is run by college dropouts and computer nerds.
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) degrees are the only kind of degrees that are useful. For all the rest, read a book.

I’m going to get super smart, so I, too, can die without money.
But I’ll be the smartest dead guy! When I’m dead, know what’s gonna keep me warm? That’s right, those degrees
– Lil’ Jimmy (Skit)

So how do you fix college?
The easiest way to fix college: let people declare bankruptcy. Tuition will come back down and the worst colleges will die off. And this solution is literally free to the country and takes 5 minutes for a vote in Congress. But it won’t happen because the dirty politicians got paid to implement these rules in the first place.
That leaves us, the people, with only one option: stop going to college unless it’s for a STEM degree. Your general education is available on the internet for a tiny fraction of the price. You can do anything because of the internet. Even get paid for drinking beer.
As Kanye says, you just have to pick up leave behind what is broken. And don’t look back.

Now let’s go, take them back to the plan.
Me and my Momma hopped in that U-haul van.  Any pessimists I ain’t talk to them, plus I ain’t have no phone in my apart-a-ment.
– Touch the Sky

And if your alma mater has the brass balls to call you and beg for money, lay into those fuckers. Colleges cheated an entire generation out of their future. And Kanye West knew it first.