Politics & Power Quote by Clive James

Clive James lands the punchline with the kind of deadpan generosity that doubles as a warning: America has turned higher education into both a civil right and a consumer product, so expansive that even a blatantly made-up credential like "Hamburger Technology" can sound plausible. The joke isn’t only on diploma mills or careerist majors. It’s on a national mood that treats the degree itself as the sacrament, regardless of what’s being studied or whether it yields actual intellectual traction.

The line works because it splices two American ideals that don’t naturally coexist: democratic access and prestige scarcity. "Everyone has a right" borrows the moral language of enfranchisement, but the payoff is a credential that feels like fast food with a cap and gown. James is skewering credential inflation: when a BA becomes the baseline ticket to adulthood, institutions respond by inventing ever more "marketable" pathways, and students respond by shopping for safety. The result is a system where education starts to resemble vocational branding, and vocational training starts cosplaying as education.

There’s also a class tell in the phrase. "Hamburger" evokes low-wage service work; "Technology" adds the sheen of modernity and respectability. James isn’t arguing against people escaping dead-end jobs. He’s pointing at the cruelty of promising uplift through paper, while quietly relocating risk onto students: debt, disappointment, and a resume that signals compliance more than competence. The satire is buoyant; the target is bleak.