My dream university definitely isn’t a scam!
Something is deeply broken in the American university system. First, there is academic freedom, but it is the wrong kind. Second, there are too many windows. It is past time a university was created to address the rot eating at our higher education, and I have just the plan for it.
If there is one thing I know about institutions of higher learning, it is that billionaires and corporations love to donate large amounts of money so they can put their names on things and demand accommodations. Unfortunately, under the current system, this largesse is squandered among multiple institutions, all of which are doing only piecemeal things the billionaires would like. I want to concentrate all this money in one place.
That is why I will be starting a university, opening today. Is it an accredited, four-year university? You know, it can be, if that is what the donors want! The only thing set in stone is that we are going to accept donations from ANYONE with an idea. What if we wind up espousing conflicting values? Impossible! Our only value is money!
I don’t have a name for the university yet — this is where you, the wealthy donor, come in.
I think it should either be a situation where if you are a large corporation donating money, you get to name the whole university and we will put your logo everywhere and say your product is excellent. But I am also happy to name the university a misspelled version of a more prestigious institution (Sanford, Yal, Hahvahd) so you can say it approves of you. We can discuss!
If you donate after we have already picked the name, we will name for you a center that can correct any negative PR you have recently received — the Blackwater Center for Ending War, the Philip Morris Lung Health Complex, the Facebook Democracy Center, the Amazon Lengthy Bathroom Break Palace. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)
Then you can tell shareholders, “If we really hated for people to use the restroom, do you think we would sponsor a luxurious bathroom palace where students can relax on a toilet for hours and have products delivered to them in record time by warehouse employees?” Do you think it would help your legacy if there were a big building that said you Didn’t Do Any War Crimes? We agree, and TBDU is the perfect home for it!
Also we would raise money for the university by letting anyone who wanted to pay for a building actually design it! You would not have to know anything about architecture at all! There would be an area of campus that was sectioned off for amateur billionaire architecture, and every few weeks people could go there and watch a library fall over.
We think of our student-athletes’ education as the top priority it is, too, and don’t treat them like some revenue farm. Indeed, if any athlete would like a degree, we will find a student resembling them who attends a different university, and we will bribe that person to let the athlete attend classes at that university in their stead. Obviously we are not able to provide an education; we are just an institution designed to extract as much money as possible from eccentric billionaires and corporations.
Do we have a space program? Again, you bet! Give us money and we will discuss it.
Do we offer scholarships? ALL we offer are scholarships. I cannot conceive of any reason a student would pay to attend this university!
We will keep doing all this until people notice we have scheduled no courses and haven’t actually broken ground on the bathroom break palace. Hopefully this will take some time, though, because any time someone asks, “Where did my money go?” or say, “I gave you $8 billion to build a dorm in the shape of a Fabergé egg and teach people that oil is good for pelicans, but I don’t see any evidence that this is happening,” we will smile encouragingly and say, “It’s all happening in the metaverse.”
Once the house of cards we have built collapses like Ivy Getty Hall, we will use all the money we extracted to buy gold ingots and print degrees on them, which we will give to any student unfortunate enough to be associated with our institution. Our education may be valueless, but our degrees won’t be!
This is a flawless plan! Please donate to Definitely A Real University! Potator Omni Momento Natus Est!