In the flesh-eating film comedy Zombieland, the main character, Columbus, becomes one of the last humans on earth by scrupulously following a set of rules for survival.
Here’s one he apparently forgot to mention: Go to community college.
A new cartoon short that is making the rounds of middle-school students via social networking asserts that anyone who amasses student-loan debts (i.e. anyone who attends anything other than a community college) is doomed to wander the earth as a zombie.
The cartoon was created by two Chicago-area institutions — Elgin Community College and Harper College — in collaboration with the e-mail provider Abeedle.com.
It depicts two high-school seniors, Lynette and Theo, who are trying to choose which college to attend and wondering how they’ll pay for it. Lynette chooses community college, but Theo opts for a more-expensive four-year option.
“Both of our friends will have a wonderful educational experience,” the narrator says. ”But it is what happens after graduation that shows the true perils of student loans. Since Theo has mindlessly followed the crowd and become a college zombie, he has mountains of crushing debt that will affect every area of his life.”
Meanwhile Lynette remains financially independent, becomes a successful filmmaker, and speeds around in a sporty convertible.
“Poor Theo,” laments the narrator, ”if he had only taken a little time and thought more about his options, he might not have ended up in this sad and tragic place. But that’s just how college zombies act, isn’t it?”
We eagerly await a rebuttal from four-year colleges, unless they’re too busy devouring human flesh to respond. –Don Troop
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6 Responses to In Debt and Undead
jesor - November 19, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Chomp chomp….mmmm….young brains….full of ambition….Very cute, too bad the picture is much more complicated than that. For some students, it’s often more cost effective to attend a regional public four-year and complete their BA all at one school (particularly in medical fields where transfer course applicability may be limited), while for the majority, the CC is the best ticket, as long as they actually transfer…..very entertaining though…now where did I put that amygdala
22228715 - November 19, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Really? Seriously? I clicked on the Elgin and Harper logos, sure that some huckster had brazenly stolen their names and logos for something so unprofessional (anti-higher ed, anti-financial aid, fluffy pop-centered), and they would be suing them soon! But it appears it ACTUALLY WAS sponsored by two legitimate institutions of higher education! I’m still incredulous.(I’m still hoping… anyone from Elgin CC or Harper want to weigh in that it’s a bad student joke, perhaps an overambitious “The Internet and You” course assignment?)I don’t really know where to start, it is so dishearteningly unprofessional. Rather than go through the list of inaccuracies, exaggerations, and boasts that hope to lure what they assume are naive teens… is there any sense of whether young students are actually buying it, or just find it funny? Do 8th graders actually believe that going to their local community college will get them a spot on Grey’s Anatomy, a red sports car, and a kickin’ social life, or does it look to them like if you have to tell everyone you are attractive and popular… well… Are they laughing AT (not with) the sponsors?
atana09 - November 20, 2009 at 9:37 am
Perhaps unprofessional in a certain limited sense. But from a promotions view, quite successful insofar as it’s directly aimed at the anxieties that many have about educational debt. Plus the animation style consciously mimics the old informational cartoons that many HS students have been exposed at one time or another. Obviously attending a CC (or the CC’s in the ad) won’t necessarily solve the problem of being made into an educated sharecropper (or zombie). But the mere fact that institutions chose to make such an ad is indicative of how detrimental the student debt problem has become. They are part of the debt for education scheme, and so can’t beat it so might as well use it to their institutional advantage. In some bizarre and unintended sense this ad might become a element to reform, insofar as from a propaganda perspective one element which constantly does work is to counteract rival ideas by mocking or using humor. And anyway, college zombies is not all that much more ridiculous than some of the deadpan and unintentional humor put out by collegiate recruiters. I recall one delusional gentleman who claimed that for grad degrees in humanities there were hundreds of high paying collegiate teaching just waiting for them at graduation. And these are the degrees in which the placement rate is about the same as the percentage of unsolved UFO sightings. So in that situation no doubt there are actually lots of zombies out there-we just don’t see them as they work 3-4 jobs and live in garrets. With the general type of nonsense being propagated in college recruiting, collegiate debt zombies at least have some conceptual veracity and are certainly more entertaining than some of the other shell games promoted by college recruiting.
dank48 - November 20, 2009 at 10:56 am
The simple fact is that high school students and their (nonacademic) parents have caught on to the game. Not perhaps coincidentally the American people as a whole are disgusted with Wall Street and with Washington as well. The problem is that the con game works only up to the point where the victim tumbles to the swindle. Number 2 is afraid kids will think a CC education “will get them a spot on Grey’s Anatomy, a red sports car, and a kickin’ social life”; but will an Ivy League degree get them all that? Will the vaunted first-tier school guarantee success? Well, no. How many of the Wall Street confidence men who brought us our current economic climate have Harvard MBAs? I’d love to see a study of members of some group perceived as “successful,” such as the cast of “Grey’s Anatomy”: could it be that where a person is educated has less to do with success than other factors do? Again, people are finally beginning to see through the scam. After all, one Ponzi scheme is much like another. And as (heaven forgive me) “The Simpsons” put it, “Don’t be mean to graduate students. They’ve just made an unfortunate life choice.”The saddest part of it is that even suggesting that one might prefer to get a decent education for a reasonable cost at a CC rather than signing up for near-eternal debt is sure to be labeled anti-intellectual. It’s nothing of the kind, but it’s pretty hard to convince someone who’s already bought the magic beans.
laeddie - November 20, 2009 at 12:14 pm
The fallacy here is that the community colleges are the “roach motels” of higher education. Students go in but they never come out. In California community colleges with transfer rates in 30% range brag that they are the #1 transfer school in the state. There are many community colleges with transfer rates in the 10-18% range. We are not talking about people in Voc-Tech programs or taking enrichment courses we are talking about students who attend community college with the expressed intent to transfer into a BA program. The ugly truth is the vast majority do not transfer and do not earn a bachelors degree. So who is the real education Zombie?
atana09 - November 20, 2009 at 1:30 pm
‘The ugly truth is the vast majority do not transfer and do not earn a bachelors degree. So who is the real education Zombie?” The entire American higher education system. It shambles on mindlessly eating the money and resources of those who it is supposed to serve. 580 billion in student debt, 6% average yearlt increases in tuition and the new proposed 30% increases out in California are so excessive that even the most rabid and crazed brain eating zombie somewhere it its rotted brain would deem it excessive. Problem is, the fond memories of the tweed jacket professor and the verdant lawns are being rapidly superceded by the moans and screams attendent to the bills for college tuition. At least normal zombies are free of loan debts, interest and fees…