Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / HBCU vs. Ivy League: Which Is Really Worth It?
Transcript
- Malcolm: I'm not gonna lie, this isn't even just how this is any HBCU I'm not paying seventy thousand dollars to go to HBCU. To go to the HBCU? No. Versus for one Thomas: I mean Malcolm: for one, I don't have the the the money to pay for seventy thousand dollars school anywhere. But if I had to pay seventy thousand dollars, I'm not going to HBCU. I'm not going Thomas: Yeah. No, that I f I feel you, I feel you. And you know what? For a lot of people, they might be saying, What do you what you what you talking about? Here here's the thing, right? It's not that the dollars are better spent elsewhere. It's just if you're paying that much for th it's like spending money on designer, right? You want to spend money on a high end brand that like high end people know about, or you're gonna spend money on a on a on a belt that's flashy that looks good to people who can't really put you in a better position. When you're spending that much money on a degree, that's an investment. And HPCUs are a fantastic investment. One thousand percent. However, if you're spending that type of bread, you need to be going to Ivy League where people Malcolm: that's a thing. That's a th that's a that's also yeah, I I I agree with you. It's also that's also like a for one, I mean, you'd have to have the the stats to to even I well that's the thing though. I feel like if I was paying seventy thousand if I had to pay seventy thousand dollars in school a year, that that's that's assuming that I had the the stats to get into an Ivy League or top tier premier institution in the world. I my thing is like if you honestly the the the way I would I would make an analogy of it bro, it's like like even with I don't know, some people may think this isn't this is won't make sense, but it's the same thing like where it's like, okay, like even with like you can think about like a like RSUs when we get our vesting for like for a company, right? Let's say you work at let's say you work at freaking Oracle, right? Let's say you work at Oracle and you get stock vesting for the next four years, right? And every single year on the same date, you get a certain number of shares of Oracle. Let's say these shares you get these this number of shares, you get ten thousand dollars of Oracle stock. And it just gets deposited to your account, right? Now you, as the person on the other side of that vesting, you have an option, right? You can either keep now if you know anything about Oracle stock or the company. Oracle stock is is is is in hell right now, right? Like Oracle stock is in hell. They're down, they're down 40% year to date. and over the past year, they're down 53%, down 132 points, right? So Oracle stock is in hell. This may that may be an extreme. analogy or an extreme like example, but the choice is yours, right? It's like if you're gonna have all this money, are you gonna put it into something like Oracle? Are you gonna put it into something like like like if if I have ten thousand dollars, I had to pick a company, I'm going somewhere like Google. I'm going somewhere like a like an Apple, right? I'm going somewhere like an NVIDIA. If I have all this money and I have to spend it, I'm gonna put it towards something that I know is going to be a better bang for my buck or a a more premiere or more like I can get more out of the the the the brand value if I'm gonna be paying that much money, right? And so it's like Let's also remember, like the whole point of HPCUs and like their purpose and like why they're around. For one, obviously it's to have a safe space for students, for for people that look like us, for us, created by us, you know, from the academics to the culture to the to the to the yard to like to everything, right? To add to the athletics, right? Everything that's all curated for us by us. The other piece, which is also another huge piece, is the affordability of it, right? HBCUs are designed to be affordable for us because like a lot of times, like we aren't we don't We don't have the resources or the the the economic status or viability to get into these super high high tier institutions. Like I don't know anybody that had the money to to even if you could get in a Harvard or Princeton or Stanford, who had seventy, eighty, ninety thousand dollars a year to just drop on on that, right? So it's like we went to HBCUs because not because like we had no other option. People wanted to go we wanted to go to HBCUs. We wanted to be like on that campus surrounded by our people. But it's also like it's it's affordable, it's doable. Thomas: Yeah. Malcolm: It's it's it's a it's a still a world class education at a reasonable price tag. That's why we go. But when you're an HPCU and you're and you're raising your prices to these insane, unreasonable amounts, granted, inflation is a thing. I get it. But if you look into the numbers, bro, the proportion in which college tuition has raised to actual inflation rates and other the other cost of goods, colleges have like surpassed that by like 10, 24. Like they have like absolutely ran with it. Like I mean, like. I don't think anything has like inflated more over like an extended period of time than college tuitions.