{"id":76036,"date":"2026-09-18T01:00:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=76036"},"modified":"2026-09-17T10:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:07:13","slug":"qotd-higher-education-as-a-vast-money-laundering-racket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/qotd-higher-education-as-a-vast-money-laundering-racket\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Higher education as a vast money laundering racket"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Have I mentioned my theory (which I regard as a certainty) that Higher Education is best understood as a massive money laundering operation? We all had a good chuckle, I’m sure, at that title [“fellowship at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College in London”], just as we’ve had good chuckles at the ridiculous titles of all the Angry Studies programs infesting colleges nationwide. We’ve probably concluded \u2014 correctly \u2014 that these are just make-work for otherwise unemployable PhDs who check a few of the Diversity quota boxes.<\/p>\n

But when you consider just how much<\/em> money is involved, it’s a lot harder to laugh. Your average tenured prof makes north of $100 K, and for every one of them, there are at least two administrators, four outreach coordinators, and uncountable Special Assistants to the Assistant Provost’s Special Assistant for Diversity and Inclusion. Not to mention all the classroom space, office space, etc. that this requires (including paying the very real people who have to coordinate that stuff \u2014 no easy task \u2014 the custodial staff and so on). I’d bet that just one of these programs, all in, runs at least a million dollars per year when you throw in bennies and whatnot.<\/p>\n

That’s a LOT of scratch, for one or two classes a semester that barely even make their enrollment numbers.<\/p>\n

I dunno what nefarious purpose the Angry Studies programs serve (aside from the obvious, perpetual one of “burning down ambient civilization, just because”), but the “national security” ones I’m sure are basically just “diplomatic” cover for cloak and dagger shit. They used to use academic conferences like that back during the Cold War \u2014 who else but an officially credentialed diplomatic representative gets to travel around his enemies’ territory? In this case, of course, none of these people are actually going anywhere near war zones (with the exception of Mx. Kagan, of course, who decided to take command of American forces in the field). But academic “conferences” are good ways to make contacts and pass suitcases full of cash and other goodies around …<\/p>\n

… I suspect.<\/p>\n

Severian, “Klown Kollege”, Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2022-08-28.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have I mentioned my theory (which I regard as a certainty) that Higher Education is best understood as a massive money laundering operation? We all had a good chuckle, I’m sure, at that title [“fellowship at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College in London”], just as we’ve had good chuckles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,79,41,13],"tags":[363,1462,764],"class_list":["post-76036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-education","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-corruption","tag-severian","tag-university"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-jMo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76036"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104843,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76036\/revisions\/104843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}