The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:13:41 · David Brooks
[00:13:41] S2: Yeah. I I mean, I would say the the the one little activity that personifies what you just said is my daughter did okay in her SAT scores, and she started getting brochures from colleges. And she got big, expensive, glossy brochures from schools like Harvard. There is literally no student in my ZIP code who can get into Harvard who doesn't know about Harvard. And so why did they send these fancy brochures in order to induce students to apply so they can reject them? That way, they can say we are rejecting 96% of the kids who are applying to our school. And so that's a bit of the cynicism of creating... Not only creating scarcity, but bragging that you've become a rejection academy, rejecting 96% of the kids who apply. And so that to me is a bit of the segmentation. And then recruiters from the banks and the consulting groups, they recruit at various few schools. Somebody did a study of looking at who works at media, entertainment, corporations, law, science, and 54% in these various diverse fields went to the same 32 elite colleges. And so we have created a segregation system based on SAT scores and grades that divide society at a very early age. And a lot of kids know by age eight or nine because they're tested so often whether the system thinks they're dumb or smart. And the dumb ones are alienated, and they think the system is rigged against it, which is accurate. I had an interesting call with a friend of mine who lives in Ohio who's an electrician, And he he said, you know, David, I I saw you saying nice things about institutions, that you really were through some really wonderful institutions that made you a better person, and I would include my summer camp, my high school, my college. He said, I've never felt that way about institutions. That was such a novel thought for me because every institution I've been a part of is like a jackboot in my face. And that's just a very different attitude than those of us who were fortunate enough to, well, to do reasonably well in these elite institutions.
00:15:41 · Scott Galloway
[00:15:41] S0: We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from Nutrafol. Upgrading your routine doesn't mean you have to change everything. Sometimes making just one meaningful change can make a huge difference. So if you've been thinking about your hair health, you might wanna check out Nutrafol. Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand, and it's the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. Because hair growth isn't one size fits all. Nutrafol offers different formulas for both men and women at any age or stage of life. And now, the Nutrafol women's formula has been upgraded to its most advanced version yet. It's a 100% vegan, biotin free, and comes in a smaller capsule size to make your daily routine easier. Nutrafol's hair growth supplements are peer reviewed, NSF certified for sport, and clinically tested. Adding Nutrafol to your daily routine is easy. Order online, no prescription needed, with automated deliveries and free shipping to keep you on track. Plus, with a Nutrafol subscription, you can save up to 20% and get added perks like a free headspace membership to support your hair health journey. You can see thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months. Now is offering our listeners $15 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit nutrafol.com and enter promo code prop g. That's nutrafol.com spelled nutrafol.com. Promo code, Prof G for $15 off. Be sure to use our code to support the show. Support for the show comes from Apollo. The world's leading companies don't need off the shelf financing solutions, whether it's funding growth, modernizing operations, or strengthening their balance sheet. CEOs and CFOs need more than capital. They need a financing partner with scale, flexibility, and certainty to help them execute. That's where Apollo comes in. Through its integrated global platform, Apollo provides access to long duration capital and a broad range of financing capabilities, helping companies develop customized financing solutions designed around their strategic objectives and structured at an efficient cost of capital. Custom made, investment grade. Learn more at apollo.com/capital. Apollo global management, capital provider, asset manager, wealth and retirement solutions.
00:17:56 · Scott Galloway, David Brooks
Support for the show comes from LinkedIn ads. There's no worse feeling than making a major investment in something only to realize it didn't exactly live up to the hype, such as buying a nice piece of tech that ends up in storage collecting dust or taking a business workshop where your main takeaway was little more than a few motivational words. If you work in marketing, this can happen with ads. You optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach, and reactions. But when they don't show revenue, well, that can turn into an unfun conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend. Reach the right buyers from LinkedIn ads and invest in what looks good to your CFO. According to the 2026 Dream Data Benchmark Report, LinkedIn ads generated the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. It's a 121%. You can target by company, industry, job title, and more. It's time to cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 in your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/scott. That's linkedin.com/scott. Terms and conditions apply. You're a thoughtful guy. I wanna I wanna move to solutions. Do you think it's... I mean, one idea. I just spoke with David Axelrod, the University of Chicago. You went to... You... You're a Chicago grad. [00:19:14] S2: Yeah. I'm a Chicago guy.
00:19:14 · David Brooks, Scott Galloway
[00:19:14] S2: Yeah. I'm a Chicago guy. [00:19:15] S0: Yeah. Okay. In the middle of the tour, I just did that college week, college tour with my son. And they keep talking in this very, like, warm tones if we look at the full applicant. And then along the way, a parent. And, of course, it's only the parents asking questions. But But I think they should pass a law that no parent is ever allowed to ask a question in these tours. Anyways, someone makes the mistake of asking the admissions rate. And the guy, this lovely high EQ guy goes, it's 4%. So there's 75 people on this tour, 25 kids, 50 parents. So one of them is getting in, and we're all marching around the campus. And I say to my son, I said, let's let's leave the tour. I I just don't wanna get your hopes up here. You're not getting into the University of Chicago with a 4% admissions rate. You're just not. And I wonder if some of these schools should lose their tax free status that if you have if you have an endowment over a billion dollars, you're not growing your freshman class faster than population. You're no longer a public servant. You're a hedge fund with classes. What... You're a thoughtful guy. You've written on the topic. What do you think we do to try and break the caste system that has become higher education? [00:20:20] S2: You know, first, on those college tours, I've never felt more invisible in my life than when I'm a parent on one of those college tours because you realize you don't matter at all. But I would say these schools, and I piss on them all the time, they're still fantastic places.
00:20:20 · David Brooks, Scott Galloway
[00:20:20] S2: You know, first, on those college tours, I've never felt more invisible in my life than when I'm a parent on one of those college tours because you realize you don't matter at all. But I would say these schools, and I piss on them all the time, they're still fantastic places. [00:20:36] S0: You can get in. It's amazing.
00:20:37 · David Brooks
[00:20:37] S2: Get in. They're they're amazing places of deep learning. And what I'm hoping is the universities will do a couple things. First, expand, as you suggest, to allow more access. Second, do genuine intellectual diversity on campus. And so since I'm more conservative in the campus norm, I now talk politics, something I would never have done in the classroom. I'd said, look, I'm a conservative. I just wanna explain to you what it feels like why I became a conservative so you have some access. You know what a conservative looks like. And so that's strange to a lot of students. The third and most important thing is we need to redefine our definition of ability. There's whole system is based on a definition of ability, which is the ability to suck up to teachers between the ages of 15 and 18 and do well on standardized tests. That is not what genuine ability is. It doesn't allow for curiosity. It doesn't allow for determination, for drive, for social skills. And if we had a wider definition of ability that rich parents couldn't game as well to include those more humanistic traits, then it's more widely dispersed across populations. And we would have a more democratic student body because we'd measure the things that really matter that don't require you to go to a private school to get all the training. And so to me, the history of the meritocracy is the history of different definitions of ability. And we used to... It used to be if you were in a military society, it was military courage. Then in the nineteenth century, it was social breeding. Did you come over from the Mayflower? But in the nineteen thirties to nineteen fifties, the whole system switched over to IQ, and that's just an incredibly narrow definition of ability. So the only way to really diversify and democratize the system is to redefine what ability is, what we're gonna measure, what criteria we're gonna use to accept or reject kids. And we'll understand that the distinctions these days we draw between Princeton and, I don't know, Penn State, these are ridiculous distinctions. Williams and Amherst, you know, these are ridiculous. But we've built this hierarchy of status, which perverts and distorts all of society.