"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance"
About this Quote
The line lands like a tidy punchline, but it’s really a fiscal warning dressed up as common sense. Derek Bok, a lawyer-turned-university president, knew exactly where to aim it: at taxpayers, legislators, and trustees who treat education as a discretionary luxury rather than public infrastructure. By flipping the usual complaint, he reframes the debate from sticker shock to long-term liability. Education looks pricey on a balance sheet; ignorance hides its costs until they arrive as crime, medical debt, civic dysfunction, and a workforce that can’t adapt.
The craftsmanship is legalistic in the best way: a conditional (“If you think...”) that concedes the listener’s premise, then a directive (“try...”) that invites an experiment no one can actually run. You can’t trial-run ignorance without living through the consequences. That rhetorical trap is the point. It forces the audience to imagine “ignorance” not as an insult but as an externality machine, a generator of downstream expenses the market won’t neatly price in.
Subtextually, Bok is also defending institutions like his own from the suspicion that universities are self-serving cost centers. He’s arguing that the real extravagance is underinvestment: shortchanging schools, training, libraries, and research because the benefits are diffuse and delayed. In a late-20th-century America wrestling with tax revolts and rising tuition, the quote functions as a compact rebuttal to austerity politics: you can refuse the bill now, but the interest will come due in public life.
The craftsmanship is legalistic in the best way: a conditional (“If you think...”) that concedes the listener’s premise, then a directive (“try...”) that invites an experiment no one can actually run. You can’t trial-run ignorance without living through the consequences. That rhetorical trap is the point. It forces the audience to imagine “ignorance” not as an insult but as an externality machine, a generator of downstream expenses the market won’t neatly price in.
Subtextually, Bok is also defending institutions like his own from the suspicion that universities are self-serving cost centers. He’s arguing that the real extravagance is underinvestment: shortchanging schools, training, libraries, and research because the benefits are diffuse and delayed. In a late-20th-century America wrestling with tax revolts and rising tuition, the quote functions as a compact rebuttal to austerity politics: you can refuse the bill now, but the interest will come due in public life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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