"Instead, most colleges are studies in obsolescence"
About this Quote
A working actor calling most colleges "studies in obsolescence" lands like a dry heckle from someone who’s watched institutions cling to yesterday’s script. The phrase is doing double duty: it indicts higher education as outdated, but it also twists the college brochure language back on itself. Colleges love to present themselves as laboratories of the future. McCord flips that myth with one clean substitution - not innovation, but obsolescence as the real curriculum.
The intent feels less anti-learning than anti-bureaucracy. "Most" is crucial: he’s not torching education wholesale; he’s isolating a pattern. The subtext is about lag. Colleges, in this reading, don’t just move slowly; they monetize slowness, packaging stable traditions as prestige while the world outside updates at software speed. If you’re an actor - a profession where auditions, technology, tastes, and networks mutate constantly - an institution that teaches fixed pathways can feel like a museum charging admission.
There’s also a quiet class-and-career critique tucked inside. Obsolescence isn’t an abstract idea; it’s a bill coming due in the form of debt and mismatched skills. The line implies that for many students, the campus experience is a costly rehearsal for a job market that has already changed the casting call.
Contextually, it fits a late-20th/early-21st century mood: credential inflation, suspicion of admin bloat, and the sense that schooling sells reassurance more than readiness. The sting comes from how effortlessly the sentence punctures a sacred story.
The intent feels less anti-learning than anti-bureaucracy. "Most" is crucial: he’s not torching education wholesale; he’s isolating a pattern. The subtext is about lag. Colleges, in this reading, don’t just move slowly; they monetize slowness, packaging stable traditions as prestige while the world outside updates at software speed. If you’re an actor - a profession where auditions, technology, tastes, and networks mutate constantly - an institution that teaches fixed pathways can feel like a museum charging admission.
There’s also a quiet class-and-career critique tucked inside. Obsolescence isn’t an abstract idea; it’s a bill coming due in the form of debt and mismatched skills. The line implies that for many students, the campus experience is a costly rehearsal for a job market that has already changed the casting call.
Contextually, it fits a late-20th/early-21st century mood: credential inflation, suspicion of admin bloat, and the sense that schooling sells reassurance more than readiness. The sting comes from how effortlessly the sentence punctures a sacred story.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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