Note: For my sociology class, I had to write a paper reflecting on a video I picked out of a list of videos assigned by my professor and... well... write about what I watched. I got a 100% on this paper, and the prof thanked me for my "...hard work and dedication to this piece." Apparently, most people half-assed it and did badly. Frankly, I half-assed it too, but I still got my A. 

Maya Nibbe

Professor

Intro to Sociology

7-12-2024

Media Reflection

In a YouTube video titled, “Is College Still Worth It?” posted by the channel Netflix is a Joke, comedian Hasan Minaj starts off by explaining how the covid-19 pandemic really brought the issue of the cost of college to the forefront, and how the pandemic lead a lot more students to ask if college was really worth its price tag (Netflix is a Joke, 2020).

According to Minaj, colleges were the first places to shut down in the USA when the covid-19 pandemic hit, causing hundreds of students to sue their schools for their tuition money back (Netflix is a Joke, 2020). In response, one university dean told the students that they would not be getting their tuition money back, and linked them to a video of her dancing to R.E.M’s song “Losing My Religion” (Netflix is a Joke, 2020).

Worse, universities across America are struggling to keep their doors open due to decreasing enrollment, leading to a lack of funding needed to pay for professors, building repairs, lazy rivers, and other materials needed for students to succeed (Netflix is a Joke, 2020). To save money (and still have enough to cater to rich students), colleges have been hiring adjunct professors instead of tenured professors, which has caused many people to question if they’re getting the education they’re supposedly paying for (Netflix is a Joke, 2020).

That said, people who go to college still make between $450,000 and $660,000 more dollars in their lives than those who only graduate from high school, meaning that poor students who graduate college have a 90% chance of getting out of poverty, and are far less likely to die of unnatural causes, like suicide and alcoholism (Netflix is a Joke, 2020). Plus, the more educated a person is, the less likely they are to be unemployed, because their education makes them more valuable to employers than those who lack that education (Conerly et al., 2021).

In other words, students who go to college end up with more knowledge and “culture capital” than those who don’t, which makes them easier to work with and employ than those who never went to college (Conerly et al., 2021). Therefore, many people (including myself) have decided that despite the cost of college, it’s still worth attending. Especially since education is still very much valued by our society, and seems to pay itself off in the long run.

References

Conerly, T.R., & Holmes, K., & Tamang, A.L. (2021). Introduction to Sociology 3e. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-sociology-3e. 

Netflix is a Joke. (2020, June 15). Is College Still Worth It? | Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj | Netflix. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YytF2v7Vvw0.