https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2K59Su5iSE
(Edit: I ended up mostly talking about the student loan scam in the US, so I changed the title of this article. Also, the title of the video is “Tribute to Newt Wallen”, which would have then been the title of this article, so I didn’t want people to think that he died or that I was doing some kind of tribute to him. Anyway, the discussion stems from the video above, which is from 2012.)
This is an old video that I saw. It’s only four minutes but it feels like an hour. Nevertheless, there’s some interesting stuff here.
It starts with some kids (or possibly college students) looking at some Underbelly videos. This was the Youtube channel that Justin, Newt, and some other people did.
There’s some bad acting by these two guys talking about Underbelly.
Newt was about 31 years old when this video was made.
1:00 – After high school, he managed several cinemas.
1:15 – He went to film school for two years.
Then after film school, he started this Underbelly channel with Justin and two other people whose names have been lost to history.
Do you suppose that when he went to film school for those two years he said, “Boy, I want to make Youtube videos when I graduate”?
Nobody says that. You can make Youtube videos without a degree. That’s what the high school or college kids who are making this video are doing.
I’m not making a criticism of Newt. I’m criticising the American higher education system. It’s a total scam. How many “film schools” must there be in the US? Hundreds? Thousands? Every year, a full complement of students are enrolling in these “schools”. How many new directors do we need every year? Ten?
So that’s hundreds or thousands of people wasting their fucking time and money on this scam bullshit every year. The only people being enriched by this whole thing are the schools themselves.
I don’t know how much Newt paid for this scam school but for many people, it’s absolutely crippling debt that they’ll never pay off for the rest of their lives.
It’s not just “film schools”, although that’s probably one of the more egregious offenders of this predatory higher education system. Every college and university in America is contributing to this scam. English degrees, history degrees, philosophy degrees, politics degrees, sociology degrees: none of these are worth the paper they’re printed on. I don’t care if you went to Harvard. What are you going to do with such a degree? Aside from going to a graduate school and throwing more money at this scam, that degree is totally worthless.
Then you look at law schools. Way more law school graduates every year than there are jobs. And yet new law schools keep opening up every year and the existing law schools keep increasing their enrolment.
Even science degrees are worthless. Biology, chemistry, whatever. What are you going to do with that? Again, without going to a graduate program and getting a degree in something that’s actually required for a specific job, it’s worthless. And you didn’t even need a science degree to get into a graduate program. You could have got a degree in anything.
Music and art. Notorious sinkholes of money. I don’t even need to elaborate on this one. We all know that it’s a total waste of time and money but every year, thousands of Americans are being enrolled in these courses, not knowing that’s it’s worthless and it’s going to make them indebted to the banks for the rest of their lives.
There are only a handful of jobs that require a degree. Doctor, nurse, teacher, maybe some others. Unless you really want to do one of these jobs, don’t go to college/university. It’s a total waste of money.
I’m speaking specifically about the US experience where it can easily cost $50,000/year for this total bullshit. If you’re in a country where tuition is cheap or non-existent, do what you want.
But it makes no economic sense for an American to go to any form of higher education unless the job you want to do requires that specific degree. You’ll likely be living in poverty for the rest of your life if you get one of these worthless degrees (which is almost all of them).
At best, one of these worthless degrees will help you get your first job. Let’s say that you have an accounting degree. You might be able to get a job as an accountant at some fancy accountancy firm in the city. Whoop dee doo.
You could have got that same job, without the degree, by getting a job at H&R Block as an office assistant, demonstrating your proficiency with numbers, getting promoted to an accountant and then having a proven track record of good work. No degree required. Then apply to that Big City accountancy firm.
The total cost of that was ZERO. Indeed, YOU got paid for all of this experience.
But that guy with the accounting degree wasted four years of his life and went $200,000 in debt.
Once you have work experience, nobody gives a fuck what degree you have or don’t have. So just get the work experience. You don’t need to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get your first job. That’s idiotic.
In the unlikely event that you find a job that says that they require a degree, make it up. Just say that you have one. Nobody is going to check. And, if you want to get really into this, just have one printed out.
Anyway, back to Newt.
2:15 – They talk about Midnight Show, which is Newt’s proposed movie which is a compilation of spoof horror trailers.
He never released this but I’ve seen some of these so-called spoof trailers. So he’s been working on this for nearly ten years. They were just fucking terrible little videos of Horseface McGee in a bikini or whatever. Ten years.
And who would want to watch this anyway? The world is a richer place for never having been subjected to a completed version of this “movie”.
Then the last minute is awkward “reactions” from these kids. And in the post script, it says that this kid hopes to one day work for Underbelly.
Hope he has a degree from a “film school” first. Otherwise, Underbelly won’t hire him.
Anyway, did this kid ever follow (or “fallow” as his tenth grade self spelled it) his dream of working at Underbelly? No. But surprisingly, he’s still making Youtube videos. Kind of. Nobody is watching them but he still puts out about three videos a year.
If you do some sleuthing, you discover that he’s a “technical director” at some local tv station. Whatever that means. He got the job a couple of years ago.
Before that, he worked in retail for five years.
He got this technical director job shortly after he got his bachelor’s degree in some film shit. He was in college for five years. First he went to community college, then after three years he transferred to a “respectable” college that probably cost him upwards of $50,000/year.
Why was he working in retail for those five years? I know that he was in college so could only work part-time but that’s exactly the point. Forget about college and go get a proper job. He could have applied to this fucking local tv station right out of high school. Learn how all of this shit works on the job. Get promotions. Maybe go to a different local tv station to get a better job.
Five years of that shit, five years of learning the trade and doing various jobs perhaps at various local tv stations and he’d be able to get this technical director job. Cost him nothing. Indeed, he was earning money this whole time.
Instead, he got a $200,000+ degree that he’ll be paying off for the rest of his life. Home ownership, car ownership, boat ownership, forget it. The only directors getting any boats are the board of directors at these colleges.