Bernie Madoff: The Dean

Every day, students are drilled to believe they will enter the job market with a secure future. We are taught that studying hard and outcompeting our peers will launch us into success. That success is a latent promise that drives our scholastic endeavors. That success is also as fabricated as Bernie Madoff's investment promises and is only realized upon actual return of investment.

On June 29, 2009, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison. His crime: taking people's money with a promised return that far exceeded any legitimate investing firm. His method: paying back investors with new investors' money. Why it worked: Madoff consistently acquired new investors that allowed him to pay back previous investors with the new income. There was no investing; there was simply a bank account with a lot of money in it and new money coming in with enough volume and frequency that Madoff could make promises on returns that were unfathomable by regular market standards.

As a recent graduate, I have many friends entering the American job scene. I myself have to find some type of way to make income in the next year. But there is no market for my friends and me. I just paid tens of thousands of dollars and spent the last four years of my life believing an extolled piece of paper will grant me a well paying job, but now I have that diploma framed somewhere in my parent's house, and I'm still jobless. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one either. Those guidance counselors and academic advisors lied to me, and I want my money back.

But that's not how the system works, right? School is a legitimate investment, right? That piece of paper my parent's paid for will eventually earn me ten times the money that a different investment could have, right? I haven't lived the eventually yet, but things are looking pretty stark. Now that I've made my investment and I'm asking for my return, there is nothing left in the bank and I'm SOL. This is all sounding vaguely familiar, like I just read it a couple paragraphs above or something...

On June 29, 2009, I received my diploma in the mail. I have been sentenced to an unknown future with no guarantee for success. My crime: spending the last four years of my life pilfering tidbits of knowledge from classrooms and professors. My method: believing what they said and hoping they were right. Why it worked: because everyone said it would. But so far, it hasn't. I am a member of the persistent generation of college graduates believing what we hear because we have no other choice.

So why do we praise the University and abhor the Madoff? I think the parallel is pretty clear. They both promise investors a capital return on their investment. When times are good, that return is realized. When times are bad, well, they aren't. All this is crystal. What isn't clear is the inconsistency in how we treat these two institutions. I'm not saying we should do away with universities or that we should let Madoff off the hook-all I'm saying is that there seems to be an inconsistency with how we treat similar ideals and fine line or not, we're creating hypocrites out of ourselves.