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Rowe: COVID-19 Aftermath Will Expose ‘Luxury Brand’ Higher Education, A ‘Breathtakingly Overpriced Product’

   DailyWire.com
Mike Rowe discusses "Returning the Favor" with the Build Series at Build Studio on February 05, 2019 in New York City.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

On Saturday, Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” uploaded part three of a recent interview with Mike Rowe, former host of “Dirty Jobs” and founder of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, to his YouTube channel.

You can check out parts one and two here and here.

After talking about how many of his guests “come from academia,” and that much discussion surrounds “cancel culture” and “outrage culture” at universities, Rubin asked Rowe to discuss his foundation, skilled trades, and what’s  “happening with higher ed” in the pandemic era.

Rowe replied:

Part of the reason we’re locked in this endless feedback loop of nonsense is because we’re in love with cookie cutter advice, and so we dispense it with certainty – and this is what politicians do to be elected. They have to. They have to say the thing that’s going to resonate with the most people, and so they wind up retrenching to bromines and platitudes and tropes. That’s what “safety first” is.

That’s why Cuomo said no measure, no matter how draconian or drastic, could be deemed unjustifiable if it saves a single life. Reasonable people know that’s a lie.

Rowe continued, saying that people are aware that when an airline claims that customer safety is their first priority, that’s a false statement because flying on an airplane has a certain set of danger and risk baked into it that we all understand.

“We don’t tell people the truth in a lot of ways, but when we lie to them now, the consequences are catastrophic,” Rowe stated. “So, we’ve got to get past the cookie cutter advise, the bromides, and the platitudes.”

He added that one or more “silver linings” that could come about in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is the revelation that “the way we learn” could change.

Two weeks ago, I watched on YouTube a lecture from MIT for free, the same lecture that would have cost X thousands of dollars, right? So, I think when the dust settles, higher education is going to be revealed for the luxury brand that it truly is, and when you take away all of the stuff that has nothing to do with learning or connecting, you’re gonna be left with a breathtakingly overpriced product.

The former “Dirty Jobs” host added that people will become more used to learning in different ways via technology, and “take deeper dives into more interesting ponds.”

They’re gonna find big thinkers with easily accessible ideas who are exponentially more interesting than professors, and soon, I hope, our obscene love affair with credentialing is going to stop, and we’re going to pause in every imaginable way, and look at what is essential – not just in workers or in work, but in education, in food, in fun. Everything is going to be forced through a different filter.

Admititng that he doesn’t know how these things will shake out, the mikeroweWORKS founder said that things will indeed change.

Rubin then wondered if this pandemic would agitate our world into recognizing that certain ways in which the “old world” operated were fundamentally unsustainable.

Rowe responded, noting that almost “every major transformative moment” in life is preceded by a painful event – some small and some large.

After stating that the pandemic is “the biggest thing I’ve ever lived through in terms of a transformational event,” Rowe told a story about England in 1939.

Hitler dropped a lot of bombs on London every day, day after day after day. For weeks, they stayed in, hunkered in the bunker, in the air-raid shelters, and then about three weeks into it, they started venturing out. Bombs were still falling. Started opening shops. The bombs were still falling. They opened the schools. The bombs were still falling. They were cleaning up.

Making sure to stress that he’s not saying Americans should do anything prematurely, Rowe stated that whatever comes first will always “feel premature” and “reckless.”

He went back to the Londoners:

What really drove the Brits out of their bunkers – I wasn’t there, I don’t really know – but from what I’ve read, my sense of it is, they got bored of being terrorized, and they just said, “No,” and they had enough time, as horrific as it was, they had enough time to let it sit for a minute.

“It’s very personal, and there’s a herd mentality just as surely as there’s a herd immunity, and the first ones to go will look reckless and crazy, but then others will follow, and then pretty soon you’re a guy who gets behind the wheel of your car and drives across the state knowing full well that 40,000 people are going to die this year as a result of traffic fatalities, but you get in and you strap up,” Rowe said.

There’s much more in the video than what’s written above, so check it out below:

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