Melissa Prunty Kemp

 

You keep it going man

You keep those books rolling

You pick up all those books that your gonna read

That your not gonna remember

And you keep it rolling man.

You get that associates degree okay?

Then you get your bachelors degree

Then you get your masters

Then you get your masters, masters

Them you get your doctrine

You go man!

And then when everyone says quit,

You show them those degrees man.

When everyone says

"Hey your not working, your not making any money"

You say

"You look at my degrees, and you look at my life, Yeah, I’m 52

So what? I'm smart

I'm so smart

And I’m in school

All these guys out here making money

Other ways

And I’m spending mine to be smart!

You know why buddy?

Cause when I die buddy

You know what’s gonna keep me warm?

That’s right.

Those degrees."

— Kanye West, “School Spirit Skits 1 – 2” 

 

The first time I heard the lyrics from Kanye West’s blockbuster debut album College Dropout (2004), I thought to myself that I had yet another reason to agree with President Obama’s unfortunate contention—he’s “an asshole.”  As I reviewed West’s formidable, critically acclaimed discography, I found the need to grow a thick skin against its pschological assault.  Unlike many contemporary hip hop artists, West’s lyrics are tangential to what some in the 1990s and 2000s referred to as “conscious rap”—lyrics by brave artists who desperately swam against the tide of misogynistic, violence-glorifying, hyper-sexualized rap music. While Kanye’s music certainly contains typical contemporary rap and hip hop elements, these are superseded by political ridicule, the sarcastic airing of our pop cultural dirty laundry, an overwhelming hallmark of the music wielded like a bludgeon. 

 

I was astonished at the ultimate, bitter truth in the “School Spirits” lyrics.  A knife in the side, twisted to augment pain—that’s the effect of considering that in contemporary America, 63% have at least some college; of this, 27% have a bachelor’s degree or higher yet, as West has thrust in our faces, many of these graduates, 53% in fact as of 2012, have no jobs, or are under-employed.  That was true in 2002-2003 the these lyrics were written; it’s exponentially true in 2013.  Not only do current statistics on the association of education and employment call into question whether my own 27-year career as a college professor has achieved the purpose of educating students for productive employment; they also question the purpose of obtaining higher degrees, which if not properly targeted toward “careers of the future,” can lead to large student loan bills and not the promised increase in employability.  Kanye West’s lyrics are inordinately predictive for so many Americans, myself included.

 

I purposefully obtained a second graduate degree—a specialization in my major field and one that I was sure would increase my college/university employability.  I believed I would also gain the added benefit of having a terminal degree in the arts concentration of my discipline.  I would end up being specifically credentialed to teach in this additional concentration at any college or university, but particularly at the college where I had taught for ten years prior to starting this second degree.  But just like the woeful tale told by “Some Guy” in “School Spirit Skit #2,” I attained more degrees but ended up being laid off from the very job for which I chose to further academically prepare.  I also chose to assume more debt, thinking I would be increasing, not decreasing, my earning potential.  

My circumstance occurred in 2012; imagine my sheer horror at hearing Kanye West’s prescient lyrics in 2013.  What a boob I must have been, along with a few million other Americans, not to understand the probability of West’s irritatingly true words.  Like “Lil Jimmy,” Generations X, Y and some Baby-Boomers have become victims of pursuing a regular staple of the America life that is supposed to get us the American Dream—education.  And like Lil Jimmy, too many of us are “super smart, so I to can die without money. / But I'll be the smartest dead guy.”  Perhaps had we been able to interpret the meaning through the maze of modern distractions, more of us might have had the irritating grit of West’s implications turn into pearls over time.

 

After my initial reaction to these three separate but clearly related “Skits,” I asked myself from a critical thinking standpoint, what was I to make of them?  Having proven much too predictive to ignore, what should I extrapolate from these words that might lead me away from an awful Lil Jimmy homeless fate (and I had been close before)?  Was there some wisdom I could synthesize that I could pass on to the next young person I talk to who is considering a college education?  I did not want to be the tired, yet well meaning, college professor character of College Dropout who, in the lyrics of “Graduation Day,” is pleading with Kanye to succeed in college and produce “something” that would “uplift the youth.”  I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that current and potential students are aware of a growing chorus of their peers who agree with Kanye, that a college education for the less than affluent often leads to crushing debt and ultimate homelessness rather than affluence—which Kanye himself proves is available to the innovative, courageous, un-college-educated entrepreneur.  And he’s not the only student who has done so.  But are people like these the exception, not the rule? With the career treacheries that can face a new graduates in entry-level positions; with a flat job market or sustained periods of high unemployment; with the tornado of graduate degree advertising; the two or four-year college graduate is forced to be a junky with their arm out, begging to get faded with more education and more dreams of a reasonable level of success and security.  

 

Perhaps one conclusion that can be drawn from Kanye’s own life against the backdrop of the Lil Jimmy’s has to do with the consolidation of skills in pursuit of a dream.  West is in fact a college drop-out from two different institutions.  You could argue that he had the luxury to drop out and still create success because he could retreat into musical skill and exceptional sound-board production ability.  West is not an inner-city former gang member, but raised in a middle class home with professional parents, one a college English professor.  West was capable of blending several years of exploration into related artistic pursuits to realize musical significance—music production prior to his debut album with huge hip-hop stars; creating and selling beats to other artists; and his brief study of Art and English in two colleges.  In this sense, Kanye lives an example of the historian James Truslow Adam’s definition of the American dream—“a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.”   

 

But in another sense, West is not the antithesis of the college graduate his lyrics ridicule.  If we assume the validity of research that says class has everything to do with higher education attainment and completion, and that working classes will be less successful in some higher education arenas, or will not seek high enough levels, or will not pursue or succeed in progressive, futuristic majors like math and science; then, given his middle class upbringing, West himself would be able to achieve more career success, even with some college, than would his woebegone character Lil Jimmy and the multitudes of people like him across the country.  Two implications surface from this: one is that Americans, those considering entrance into higher education, or those considering returning for more, should educate themselves toward their talents and areas where their hearts lie, those places where they spend the most mental, emotional and psychological time and energy.  

 

A second implication could be that the road to success for the working classes has had some of its most sacred pathways—education for instance—appropriated, exploited for profit and stripped of its inherent ability to raise one from poverty’s depths. Exorbitant fees are attached to college, even for short programs that offer certificates or Associate’s degrees.  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 37 million student loan borrowers have wracked up 807 billion dollars in debt in 2011 , and about 14% of these borrowers struggle to repay.  From 2010 forward, the struggle has moved from working class graduates of unscrupulous for-profit colleges to middle class graduates of highly respected institutions.  Three decades of college graduates face employment and income insecurity in large numbers.  The current disconnect between education and employment is frankly breathtaking.  Could one reason for the disconnect be that knowledge, intellect and critical thinking are no longer valued in the most powerful segments of our society?  Apparently our historical precedent of American anti-intellectualism continues to haunt us, seen through our emphasis on skill-based, utilitarian education that prepares most people to “do” things rather than to “think” or “innovate.” 

 

That Kanye’s lyrics avow American anti-intellectualism is hard to swallow as well as paradoxical.  The vitriol of this all too familiar image keeps me up at night: “When everyone says / ‘Hey your not working, your not making any money’ / You say / ‘You look at my degrees, and you look at my life, Yeah, I’m 52 /So what? I'm smart’”.  Clearly the speaker, “Some Guy,”—the typically educated and socialized of us all—equates the presumed result of earning degrees as higher earning power; clearly Lil Jimmy—that consciousness in us all that remembers the good old days—in his skit equates obtaining degrees with knowledge acquisition, which to him is as valuable as money.  If knowledge is power, Lil Jimmy should be right, as should all of us who have sacrificed in pursuit of it.  But realistically speaking, when Lil Jimmy is covering himself, homeless, with degrees he and his father have earned rather than the typical newspaper used for homeless bedding, can one reasonably conclude that knowledge brings earning potential or any other kind of power? Many who have tried to address the failure of college students to find employment have argued that the types of degrees and the levels of education sought have proven to be part of the problem, but then, attaining more degrees doesn’t mitigate the problem.  The end result—higher intellect and poverty. So who are the true intellects? That’s the ugliest, most disconcerting question of all.

 

Should we be like Kanye, follow the current wave and learn to be successful “doing” something rather than “being” something?  Kanye’s deceased mother and I shared the same profession.  Are we less successful or innovative for training the young minds that sometimes go on to “do” something, earning millions of dollars in the process?  Is the intellectual sweat we shed earning those degrees less valuable because it brings in less conspicuous wealth?  In our popular cultural definitions of success, the answer is yes, we are less successful because we earn less money, and those naysayers who continue to advocate for the heights of intellectual achievement are being drown out by economic reality. Our degrees are less valuable when in the end they don’t earn so many us the ability to eat reasonably well, pay the rent or our overwhelming student loan debt. You could argue like the late Notorious B.I.G., “mo money, mo problems,” but for millions of Americans, that’s a problem they would like to enjoy for a while.  Perhaps we should return to taking a Booker T. Washington approach—set down our buckets where we lay.  Or perhaps it’s what my friend Antoinette Ouattara, Nutrition Coach, said the other day:  “Bloom where you grow!”

 

So where does that leave those 40 and 50 somethings who find themselves un-employed, under-employed and with multiple degrees? Strangely enough, a lot of us are trying to tap a brash courage to follow dreams, put together divergent, strident skill-sets to create a living that keeps us off the streets and hopefully moving toward some sort of self-actualization.  We have no choice now but to find out the truth behind the statement being laid off could be the best thing that ever happened.  We had better make it so.