Steve Jobs on School Vouchers: Competition for Education

Interview excerpt on America's schools · 1995
Video thumbnail: Steve Jobs on School Vouchers: Competition for Education
9 minInterview294K views across 1 upload1,599-word transcriptWatch on YouTube ↗

What Jobs talks about

In this interview excerpt, Jobs argues that America’s schools are failing because they operate without real competition or customer accountability. He says the real customers of education are parents, not students, and that public schools have become insulated from the people they serve.

His proposed fix is a voucher system that would give parents direct purchasing power over schooling. Jobs says that would force schools to market themselves, improve quality, and create new options, even if it meant some schools would close.

The core idea is classic Jobs: competition drives excellence, while monopolies drift toward lower quality. In his view, education would improve if parents had the power to choose and schools had to earn their trust.

A news host introduces the segment, and Steve Jobs is quoted within a larger discussion that also includes other commentators.

In his words

“If you ask, who are the customers of education?”
“The customers are the parents.”
“And what happens when customers leave and monopolies take over”
“Our schools fail because there is no competition.”
“Give parents power.”

Key points

  • Parents are the true customers of education.
  • Schools decline when they face no competition.
  • A voucher system would give parents real power.
  • Competition would push schools to improve quickly.
  • New schools would emerge, and weak ones would fail.
  • The current system shields schools from oversight and accountability.

Full transcript

For several decades, America has been the most advanced, more advanced than other countries in terms of doctrine, weapons, technology, energy. One of the reasons is our work ethic. No one was born with it. You learn it from your family, culture, and school. For the best interest of America, this country must be fulfilled by educated people. So, a century ago, the government decided that every child must be obliged to go to school. That helped shape several of America's best generations. Students in this classroom have many different ways of learning. Jim, of course, thinks about the state's family report. He doesn't want to postpone it until the last minute. First, he has to be ready for his science class this afternoon. Then he can use the remaining one hour for the state's family report.

Classes today are not like that. Children learn about sex as a science, racism as a reading, feminism as a physics, and hatred as a history. How can this happen? Our schools have become commonplace over the years. And we see the results. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computer, explained the reason. If you ask, who are the customers of education? The customers are the parents. Not the students, but the parents. The problem we face in this country is that there are no more customers. Customers no longer pay attention to their schools. Mothers are starting to work and don't have time to attend PTA meetings and supervise their children at school. Schools are becoming more complex, and parents are becoming less involved in their children's education.

And what happens when customers leave and monopolies take over, like what happens in our country, is that the level of service is almost always decreasing. The statement about the mothers will make their jobs canceled if they say so today. However, the bigger point is that parents don't realize what happened in class like before, and the government likes it that way. Public schools don't want anyone to supervise them because they don't want customers to supervise behind the table. However, a few decades ago, Steve Jobs had a solution for this. Give parents power. I am very confident that if the government gives every parent a voucher, a check as big as $4,400 that they can only spend on accredited schools, a few things will happen.

First, schools will start marketing themselves to parents to get students. Second, I think you will see a lot of new schools established. You will see the quality of schools increase again, like in a competitive market. Some schools will go bankrupt. Many state schools will go bankrupt. No need to be doubted, it will be very painful for the first few years. It should be like that. However, I think it is far less painful than children who run systems like now. Our schools fail because there is no competition. However, if you introduce competition, they will teach mathematics and history again very quickly because parents do not want to school their children in a bad school or a school that is aware of progress. They do it just because they have to do it. They have no choice. You want to fix state schools? You can't. The government wants to defend it like now.

The dirty little secret is that the government, teachers, and parts of the country in power want your son to be stupid. They want your daughter to be stupid. They do not want an independent thinker. They want stupid people and should say, of course, I will wear a hat. I believe in the FBI. Second, I think what I see in the news is true. They do not want students to ask questions because the mind that wants to know will ask why our borders are wide open and ask why we fund Wuhan Laboratory and ask where all the money goes in Ukraine. The smart population is a threat to the people in power in America. They even want zombies. They want the service line. That's the only way they want.

Learn the most basic things in public school. Take a big loan to wash your brains in their high school. And then you're buried in debt on the couch where they want you to be drunk and watch Netflix and order Simless and other garbage from Amazon Prime. They want you to be wrapped in debt and sugar so you're fat and dependent. Then they give you some help, you know, Biden's money, erase your loans, but you're still stuck and they have your voice. However, you are depressed because you are not independent and you are bored because your life has no adventure. Then you fall ill because you are not healthy and the American health care system injects a lot of pills into your throat. They create a stupid lower class. They want to rape our country to oblivion so they can finance our ignorance.

Every general election they will write a check for you, give you free stuff, then raise the price for everything else. Like what they do with electric cars, like what they do now with college tuition. You think this high school needs money? They're rich. These universities look like a kingdom. Go to almost every city and you will find a large campus with sophisticated facilities and tens of thousands of employees. They have billions of dollars in permanent funds that are managed and taken by some of their Wall Street friends, but you end up with a $4 billion debt. $4 million. They are predators and you are their prey. And if you wake up and start asking questions and start saying the wrong things, maybe a little bit politically incorrect, maybe too much of a challenge to the system, they will rape, rape and destroy you.

And don't ask how they're going to pay for all this. They can't even explain it. You want to know why? Because they don't even care. Do you all believe that this student loan program has been paid in full? We believe it will be paid in full because of the work that this president has done on the economy because of what you just said. Well, what I just said is what we have done to reduce the deficit, reducing the deficit that is important in the work that we will continue to do. What? I will translate. You pay other people to go to college and learn about why America is racist. For them, it is priceless. Let's switch to Victor Davis Hansen, a senior fellow at the Hofer Institution and the author of The Dying Citizen.

They want us to be stupid, lazy and fat and not ask anything, right? Yes, I think so. I mean, we have control over higher education when we guarantee student loans and we give them a bonus and what we do. We let them pass just like that. I mean, we can finish K-12 if we tell every teacher, you have an alternative, Jesse. You can go through the monopoly of education schools and get credentials and be brainwashed, or just take glory in the eyes of academic education such as high-education teachers or preparatory schools. And I think there will be a mass exodus from education schools and they can't control all these programs and teachers will be much tighter academically. We can tell every student who gets a degree, you have to take a national test like SAT to get in.

See, take one to see how the results are if you do it better after four years. And it will measure, so we all know that BAS has the same basic mathematical knowledge. And we need to look at the time of office. That's the only profession in America where you get a full-time job after six years. They can have a rolling contract. I think it will be very important. And if we get federal funds or student loans that are guaranteed, why are they excluded from the Civil Rights Act of 1965? What I mean is who dreams of a separate graduation, a separate dormitory, a separate room, a safe space. They shouldn't be allowed to do that. And when they have questions and everything, starting from, you know, academic problems to sexual harassment, they take people's rights over the fourth and fifth amendments and they don't allow people to have a lawyer.

They don't respect the first amendment for discussion on campus. So we can say to them, if you get federal funds, will you experience a moral risk increase because you don't have it? You know, you don't play when you get student loans that come with federal government guarantees. So you have to comply with the Constitution. Second, if you don't, you won't have these student loans. They increase the inflation rate every year. The tuition fee is higher than the inflation rate. And why are they doing that? Because the federal government says, If you have a clubmate facility for students or you have a diversity, equality, inclusion service worth $200,000, we don't care. We guarantee your students can pay you.

Yeah, we're all being played. That's the problem. We're all being played and it happens right in front of us. Victor Davis Hansen, thank you very much. Wow, for your analysis. Thank you. Hi, Sean Hannity here. Click here to browse the Fox News YouTube page and watch the hottest interviews and the most interesting analysis. You won't get it anywhere else.

Transcribed from the audio with OpenAI Whisper. Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.