00:03:02.400The Supreme Court's 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power accelerated that logic.
00:03:08.060Griggs didn't ban aptitude tests completely,
00:03:11.300but it did hold that employment practices with discriminatory effects
00:03:15.080had to be justified by business necessity and job relevance.
00:03:19.620Broad employment tests became legally riskier,
00:03:22.380while college degrees became a convenient screening tool.
00:03:25.440So while there was some wiggle room there,
00:03:27.800essentially you had effectively banned those aptitude tests.
00:03:31.340It was just a lot safer legally to use the college degree as a proxy for an IQ test
00:03:37.000than actually administer one yourself.
00:03:39.860That didn't mean that Griggs single-handedly created credential inflation.
00:03:43.760there's a lot of factors involved there, but the larger phenomenon is real. Employers began
00:03:49.160requiring bachelor's degrees for jobs that previously didn't need them, turning the
00:03:53.900diploma into a proxy for intelligence, discipline, conformity, and class position. Eventually the
00:04:00.540credential became self-reinforcing. A degree was valuable because employers demanded one,
00:04:05.400and employers demanded one because so many desirable applicants had one already. The result
00:04:10.900is familiar. Jobs once open to high school graduates now ask for bachelor degrees. Jobs
00:04:16.680once open to bachelor graduates increasingly preferred master's degrees. The education
00:04:21.520itself may have little relationship to the work, but the credentials still sort through the
00:04:26.700applicants. But the economic incentives are only part of it. This is not just all about the money.
00:04:33.020College has become a rite of passage for the professional class. Parents want the sweatshirt,
00:04:38.040the move-in photo, the graduation pictures, and the reassuring sense that their children have
00:04:43.200entered a respectable world. The name on the diploma matters because the people recognize it.
00:04:49.020The campus experience matters because other high-status people share it. A student who
00:04:54.340attends Cornell doesn't merely buy classes. She's buying membership in a hierarchy that exists long
00:05:00.340after commencement. That's why attacks on higher education so often fail to change family behavior.0.99
00:05:06.120Parents can hate the professors, mock the administration, and denounce the politics while fearing that opting out will leave their children below people who stayed in.
00:05:16.260Liberal parents may genuinely believe that their daughters are under assault all the time on college campuses, that there's just this constant danger of sexual attacks,
00:05:25.560but they'll still sacrifice that, they'll still put her future on the line because ultimately the status matters more.0.99
00:05:32.600I mean, yeah, she might get sexually assaulted, but what if she doesn't have the right friends?0.99
00:05:37.440What if she doesn't get the right job?1.00
00:05:39.380What if she doesn't have the right photos after traveling the world?
00:05:44.360And ultimately, if you have to endure a little bit of harassment at college, well, I guess that's just the price of status.
00:05:51.600College also confers something money alone can't buy, entry into a social network.
00:05:57.140Elite universities connect students with other ambitious, well-connected people.
00:06:01.820Fraternities, sororities, internships, fellowships, alumni networks, and campus organizations create relationships that can shape careers for decades.
00:06:11.360Even if every lecture were useless, the network would retain enormous value.
00:06:17.200And that's why parents who despise universities still want their children admitted to them.
00:06:22.220There's a final piece to this puzzle that's a little more difficult to discuss, but very important, and that's the shift in gender roles and what that has done to the dynamics with status and college.
00:06:34.560Colleges and universities have been told to favor women and minorities over men, especially white men, at every turn.
00:06:41.720Women now make up a clear majority of undergraduate enrollment and earn about 59% of bachelor's degrees.
00:06:49.380The jobs report in August showed that 98% of new jobs went to women along with the majority of raises and promotions.0.99
00:06:58.760Liberal women are told that this is a great victory and it's their job to join the battle against the patriarchy.1.00
00:07:04.400They're not supposed to rely on men. They're not supposed to stay at home or have children or have families.1.00
00:07:10.240It's their job to tear down those traditional structures and gender roles.1.00
00:07:14.360many conservative women may not believe that but the idea that you could just skip the workplace1.00
00:07:19.240skip education skip the career find a good man settle down have kids all of that stuff because
00:07:24.720he's going to be able to take care of you unfortunately that's becoming less and less
00:07:28.840likely and it's not just because men are super lazy they're literally being gatekept out of
00:07:33.920the educational and career opportunities that would make this a reality but either way the
00:07:38.440situation is that whatever conservatives may think about the culture of universities telling a daughter
00:07:43.520to skip college can mean telling her to surrender access to the credentialed professional world in
00:07:49.480which many of her peers will compete. And this is the trap. Progressives may believe campuses
00:07:55.460expose women to unacceptable rates of sexual assault. Conservatives may believe universities
00:08:00.940corrode faith, family, and femininity. But both groups understand that status institutions control
00:08:07.200access to other status institutions. The contradiction reveals something deeper than
00:08:12.680hypocrisy. Status is the one commodity that is always zero-sum. People are status-seeking
00:08:19.560creatures and institutions that confer status, therefore acquire enormous political power.
00:08:25.380If Cornell can make parents compete for the privilege of paying hundreds of thousands of
00:08:30.500dollars while those same parents describe the campus as dangerous, then Cornell has something
00:08:35.660far more valuable than an educational product. It has the power to certify who belongs.
00:08:43.220Conservatives spend enormous amounts of energy winning arguments about college.
00:08:47.840They complain about ideology, debt, useless majors, campus sex, and administrative bloat.
00:08:53.620Then they celebrate when their daughters get into an Ivy school.
00:08:57.540That should really tell you something.
00:08:59.400People will sacrifice their daughters on the altar of the university for status.1.00
00:09:06.860If conservatives truly want to win the political battle, they should spend less time arguing with institutions that confer status and more time building institutions capable of conferring status themselves.
00:09:36.860platform when you do leave a rating or review it really helps with the algorithm magic if you want
00:09:42.620to follow me on twitter or gab or substack or instagram if you want to watch these videos on
00:09:47.560rumble or odyssey the links to do that are down below in the description my book the total state
00:09:53.180is out in so many formats hardback paperback it's out in audiobook and ebook you can pick it up on
00:09:59.980amazon and of course you can read all of my columns and watch all of my shows over at the
00:10:05.320Blaze. Thanks for watching and as always, I'll talk to you next time.