Author and Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe said it is profoundly unfair for Democrats to make “taxpayers pay the tuition of those who wish to attend a university.”
The TV host’s comments were in response to a question from a fan who said HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher host Bill Maher’s recent rant questioning higher education mirrored what Rowe has been saying for years.
During his segment, Maher said higher education is a “grift,” a “luxury daycare center” staffed with “overpaid babysitters,” and questioned whether it is appropriate to make “someone who doesn’t go to college and makes less money — pay for people who do go and make more.”
“Bill Maher’s current rant on higher ed is almost identical to everything you’ve been saying for the last thirteen years through mikeroweWORKS,” the fan wrote to Rowe. “I mean, like, literally identical. How do you feel? Ripped off? Flattered? Or maybe, a bit disturbed that you and Bill Maher see eye to eye on more than a few issues here of late…”
Rowe responded by saying that he would be “nothing but flattered” if he were to learn that Maher used mikeroweWORKS as a resource for the contents of his recent rant.
“I built mikeroweWORKS, in part anyway, to be a resource for people who wanted to reconsider the conventional wisdom that college is the best path for the most people,” Rowe continued. “However, everything I believe to be true regarding that issue, I’ve learned from researching the work of others.”