The Curious College Career of Benjamin Bolger

June 3, 2024 10:28 AM

The Man Who Couldn't Stop Going to College (SLNYT)
posted by sy (52 comments total)

"Against a backdrop of pervasive cynicism about the nature of higher education, it is tempting to dismiss a figure like Bolger as the wacky byproduct of an empty system."

Mr. Bernstein, who did this to you? Who hurt you like this, who stole this measure of joy from your life? (Oh, a Thoreau quote, maybe that's who...)
posted by mhoye at 10:56 AM on June 3 [9 favorites]

Yeah I'm only a few paragraphs in, did the Ivory Tower kill his puppy????

My first thought was damn this guy is living the dream. Going to college is great, even if being a professional academic (post-doc, professor, etc) really sucks.
posted by muddgirl at 11:02 AM on June 3 [9 favorites]

I was working my way through college as a tow truck driver when one day I was called up to the Claremont Hotel. There was a young man with a brand new Ferrari, stranded. I towed his car for him (carefully!) and while talking to him I found out he was 30 years old, retired. Turns out he was one of Apple's first 12 employees. I asked him what he did now. He said he studied art and history at Cal. Going to college and being rich AF seems like a dream existence to me. I guess it was to him as well, he seemed awfully happy.
posted by jcworth at 11:10 AM on June 3 [53 favorites]

I envy that guy.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 11:34 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]

Going to college is great

Citation needed. This sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. Like, I have an undergraduate degree from one of the fine institutions mentioned repeatedly in this piece, but I hated school at absolutely every level at basically all times. You couldn't pay me to return to any kind of formal education. Ugh.

he has donated more than $2,500 to the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr

lol. lmao, even
posted by uncleozzy at 11:41 AM on June 3 [13 favorites]

The article sadly does not mention much about his mother. Is she still alive? Did she get any degrees too? I notice from a brief search on Scholar that Bulger wrote about his dad after his death. I would have wanted to learn more about his mom and what she did, and where she worked, to enable her son to pursue his educational passions.
posted by seawallrunner at 11:53 AM on June 3 [6 favorites]

Worth noting for those of us of a certain age: the land-grant uni I work for has free "senior auditing" for state-resident seniors. Go to class, do the reading/homework you actually want to, ignore the rest, don't sweat assignments and exams.

I'm sure we're not the only place with programs like this. It's definitely a thing I have my eye on for when I myself get to that certain age.

I've had to deal with a couple of Bolger-likes, but they were people who just. refused. to. graduate. Which is a problem because just one Bolger Georg (who is an outlier adn should not be counted) badly damages our time-to-degree numbers; also because enrollment goes by seniority, Bolger Georg can hog space in popular classes that other students need more.

Eventually I turned the Graduate School loose on the Bolger Georgs and they were made to accept their degree. (If they want to take more classes, they can; they just have to enroll as a special student rather than a degree-seeker. That status removes their early-enrollment perks, which is as it should be.)
posted by humbug at 11:57 AM on June 3 [17 favorites]

When I was a student at the University of Texas in the 80s, there was an older gent, white hair and white beard—maybe 75 years of age—who was a fixture on campus. The just-so story us kids told each other about him was that he had gone to college on the GI Bill, and only had to repay the loan when he graduated, so he just…didn't.
posted by adamrice at 12:34 PM on June 3 [11 favorites]

I've had to deal with a couple of Bolger-likes, but they were people who just. refused. to. graduate. Which is a problem because just one Bolger Georg (who is an outlier adn should not be counted) badly damages our time-to-degree numbers; also because enrollment goes by seniority, Bolger Georg can hog space in popular classes that other students need more.

Eventually I turned the Graduate School loose on the Bolger Georgs and they were made to accept their degree. (If they want to take more classes, they can; they just have to enroll as a special student rather than a degree-seeker. That status removes their early-enrollment perks, which is as it should be.)

A very late bloomer to higher ed (also dyslexic), I was encouraged by faculty for years to keep chugging along with a custom-focus education, till an apparently frustrated state uni administration informed me that I too had been a bugbear and abruptly demoted my registration to a week before each new semester (when classes are already full) and (embarrassed and discouraged) I pulled the plug on grad programs. Sorry? There's got to be a friendlier way for those of us who are not yet senior auditors but want or need credits outside our majors, or have "just" found the reward of continuing education.
posted by Claude Hoeper at 12:38 PM on June 3 [11 favorites]

So according to this article, in 2022 he was "the head teaching fellow for a course in Harvard College’s General Education Program," and the NY Times article says "He has worked as an adjunct or visiting professor at more than a dozen colleges." He seems like he would be a good teacher, and teaching is valuable.

What's not particularly valuable is coaching people how to get into selective colleges, but clearly that's where the money is.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:06 PM on June 3 [3 favorites]

badly damages our time-to-degree numbers

I don't know if I mentioned this ever before, but I'm an older-than-average student who returned to college part-time last year at 49 to finish a degree I started in 1992 -- and after fall semester I got a WHY AREN'T YOU GRADUATING ALREADY letter. It was actually from student loans, apparently when you hit a certain number of credits, you're not supposed to get student loans any more unless you've got an excuse and a plan to graduate. Several meetings with my advisor to put together a letter and a plan, and now I am still getting student loans as long as I don't screw things up and mess up the schedule -- I only have until 2026 to graduate and then excuses won't matter, that's it. We had a little heart attack when planning my summer semester, we discovered had missed a required class in my 2026 plan, but we were able to fit it in.

Granted, I'm in an arts degree so it's probably not as hard as a hard sciences class might be, but I'm enjoying myself. Write a thousand words, plan and execute a project, read something to understand it, follow instructions and successfully do what the instructions say? I do all that at work and my work stuff isn't nearly as much fun. If I had the money and the time I'd probably be a "wall full of degrees" person, just keep learning stuff and then finding the next thing to learn.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:07 PM on June 3 [18 favorites]

Without having read the article, I can say that I'd love to be able to do nothing but take college classes and learn stuff for the rest of my life.
posted by Ickster at 1:12 PM on June 3 [11 favorites]

OMG I've met that guy, many years ago - he was a classmate of a friend of mine in the architecture program at Columbia. I had no idea about all the rest of it!
posted by sriracha at 1:22 PM on June 3 [10 favorites]

I can't help but think of that scene from Good Will Hunting.

"You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fucking education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library."

One degree is pretty necessary for white-collar life in the US. Fourteen more degrees? That's just a paper chase. At a certain point, you just need to spend more time in the library and less time in the classroom.

All that said, there will always be another master's program that's more than willing to take your money, so: shrug?
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 1:38 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]

I wonder if we sometimes forget that people like doing things?
posted by Horkus at 2:09 PM on June 3 [31 favorites]

Zonker Harris anyone
posted by Melismata at 2:37 PM on June 3 [14 favorites]

Given how often I have nightmares about missing finals, I don't think I would enjoy this experience. I do enjoy learning new things, though, so the Senior Auditing sounds interesting.
posted by bacalao_y_betun at 3:03 PM on June 3 [3 favorites]

Now having read the article, I can't say I care much for his vocation (coaching people who want to get into Ivies), but I write software for companies, so who am I to judge?

I get the impression it would be both very interesting and somewhat trying to spend a lot of time with him, but that's better than a lot of people in the world. Sounds like he's living his dream, and not hurting anyone in the process, which is as much as any of us can ask.
posted by Ickster at 3:18 PM on June 3 [5 favorites]

I could have been happy taking classes all my life. I love learning about just about anything. Anything English, linguistics, or humanities related was almost impossible to resist. Zoology, botany, anything animal or plant related was harder, but I still snuck in extra sciences when I could. I really wish I had majored in vet med. Music. Art. History. Chemistry, physics, math were so hard! (I sucked at them, but still interesting.) I wish I could keep taking remedial math and algebra until I actually get it. Passing a class doesn't mean understanding the material! Geology, law--I'd even attempt some political science. Going to school is an addiction like reading, only I tend to get lazy with what I read. I want to learn about challenging concepts, but they're hard and I'm lazy. I need explanations and regular deadlines and discipline imposed externally. Education for life!!
posted by BlueHorse at 3:25 PM on June 3 [10 favorites]

Seems like maybe he’s taking space in these programs that could be given to someone less advantaged and with more need for the credential. Given how human memory works and how quickly things change it isn’t like he’s building some superhuman understanding of the world with all those degrees and diplomas. We shouldn’t treat number of degrees as some kind of high score to gawk at with a lauditory profile in the New York Times.
posted by interogative mood at 3:34 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]

who stole this measure of joy from your life?

Speaking as someone who would love to go to graduate school but cannot do so in the US for fear of losing whatever savings I have/having to skip out on medical care/losing my place in the workforce/foregoing retirement, I'm going to say the aforementioned empty system stole the joy.

I know multiple people with higher degrees from Ivies who had to switch careers on graduation not because they had obtained employment in their field of training but because they needed to do something, anything, immediately in order to pay off the student loans they took out to feed the coffers of a multi-billion-dollar institution.

Meanwhile, more often than not, the jobs they were qualified for but couldn't afford to take went to the sorts of people whose parents can afford to shell out $25k a year on a college admissions guru.

So yeah. So much for joy.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 3:39 PM on June 3 [10 favorites]

"After he got his doctorate in 2007, Bolger became a full-time private college-admissions consultant. 'No other consultant has Dr. Bolger’s record of success,' reads his website — a claim that is difficult to verify, yet one that many people seem to believe. Four years with Bolger runs at least $100,000. (In the world of elite college coaching, this isn’t exceptional: A five-year plan from the New York firm Ivy Coach costs as much as $1.5 million.)"

what. the. fuck.

And just to be clear -- not expressing any opinion on Bolger here, I don't have the energy to form an opinion on him. Learning is rad, I say yay for learning, but also I am proponent of additionally doing things in the World Outside(tm) [of the ivory tower]. *shrug* To each their own, I guess (although a budget that allows this level of formal education boggles me).

Anyway, no opinion on the dude himself. Instead I'm expressing an opinion on a world where people pay 6 and 7 figures for coaching for *the college application process*. not tuition. not tutoring in actual subjects that they are studying. just the application. Hundred thousand to over a million dollars. sweet Jesus what is this utter nonsense world we live in
posted by cnidaria at 3:58 PM on June 3 [19 favorites]

Does anyone else remember Roger Zelazny's 1976 Doorways in the Sand ?

The protagonist - "likeable Fred Cassidy - is an eternal undergraduate..." because he receives a generous trust fund from his cryogenically-frozen uncle for as long as he is a full-time student and has NOT received an academic degree - which, as the story opens, he has successfully put off for fully 13 years by repeatedly changing majors.

The opening of the book is mostly about the college administration trying to trick Cassidy into finishing ANY degree, so that they can finally graduate the guy out of their hair.

(Zelazny's fictional trust fund was apparently inspired by a true story: according to Alexander Woolcott ("Shouts and Murmurs VI" in the book "Long, Long Ago"), there was a perpetual trust-fund student at Columbia from the 1880s until the 1920s - a guy who acquired a PhD, an MD, JD, EE, Civ.E, etc.)
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 4:03 PM on June 3 [9 favorites]

Don’t you have like six months after finishing a degree before you have to start paying loans?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:03 PM on June 3

Don’t you have like six months after finishing a degree before you have to start paying loans?

Not (for federal loans) if you're in full-time student status.

I find this guy's dilettantism (coupled with credentialism) lightly offputting. Learning is valuable for its own sake, yes, but at some point you should start actually contributing to the creation of knowledge instead of remaining in permanent arrested development racking up learning-tokens full time. The desire to hang around in a congenial university environment indefinitely I understand quite well, but most people who want to do this figure out more adult ways.

(Also, and admittedly this is just speculation, but I bet he is in-fucking-sufferable in the classroom.)

Still, it's his life (and an interesting origin story, at least!). He must be good at charming someone--those Core teaching fellow jobs are meant to be for Harvard grad students, not randos.
posted by praemunire at 5:02 PM on June 3 [8 favorites]

I think the real story here is how this demonstrates the reality that many terminal master's programs, even at the very top universities, are basically profit centers for the school and not especially difficult to get into, or graduate from, if you're willing to pay their enormous sticker price in full.
posted by kickingtheground at 5:19 PM on June 3 [20 favorites]

I think the real story here is how this demonstrates the reality that many terminal master's programs, even at the very top universities, are basically profit centers for the school and not especially difficult to get into, or graduate from, if you're willing to pay their enormous sticker price in full.

Depends on the field, of course, but Oxbridge are notorious for this.
posted by praemunire at 5:28 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]

Because this is no longer my problem any more: I knew of a guy--I never met him but I sure did see his paperwork kind of a lot--who had been going to college very off and on and off and on and off and on--since the 70's. He's probably in his seventies now. He lived on the other end of the state, hated online learning (you'd think that would have been a great idea, but noooooo), and he constantly dropped in and out of school spontaneously for a variety of reasons, sometimes ones that came off as pretty silly. I can't even imagine all the expense from readmissions alone. I was told he sent flowers to the lady who had to process all of them at one point. She died and he still never finished.

I was all, if I ever meet him or he contacts me, I am going to ask him why he doesn't just bite the bullet, move up here for a time, and get the damn bachelor's degree over with? Instead he added another major, never ever ever filed to graduate (probably would have canceled if he ever did) and I found out at one point he wanted to go to grad school. GRAD SCHOOL?!?! This guy was the biggest "I refuse to do anything but go to college" guy I ever of before Johnny Lechner. Last I heard, this guy's ah, choice as to whether or not to drop out of school had been taken away from him, which almost sounds like a relief, but I'm pretty sure he'll manage to make his way back into good graces and start it all again. I suppose I'll never know if he ever finishes, unless he makes the news for "world's longest taking graduate."
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:10 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]

(Also, and admittedly this is just speculation, but I bet he is in-fucking-sufferable in the classroom.)

there are comments from people from several programs saying they knew him and liked him
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 6:19 PM on June 3 [5 favorites]

I dropped out of two separate universities for Reasons, each with just a couple courses to go, the last in 1995. Over the pandemic when everything was online, I did a professional certificate first and then I re-enrolled and finished a degree - class of 2022, baby.*

I actually loved being a mature student. It is so much easier to just get work done after a career. And I fell in love with learning again.

So I went and got myself a job in higher ed and now I get either free or massively discounted tuition. It’s a nice way to game the system. The only trouble is that now I have to upgrade some classes because due to all my 20 yr old messiness, my grades won’t qualify me to do a masters where I work (even if the last three were all As.)

* this has confounded resume screens but means ageism probably would only come in at the interview stage.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:45 PM on June 3 [13 favorites]

I went to grad school with someone in her late 60s who used to say that it was her goal to die before any of her student loans came due.
posted by brookeb at 7:02 PM on June 3 [10 favorites]

Something tells me that a woman finally going to grad school in her late 60s has probably paid a lot of debts in advance.
posted by Songdog at 7:48 PM on June 3 [7 favorites]

Is his mother still helping him do the reading? Is she transcribing all his writing for his MFAs?

It sounds a bit like the husband and wife writing teams of the 1800s, only his name is on the diplomas but maybe they should both be there.
posted by subdee at 7:49 PM on June 3 [3 favorites]

AYKB, Doorways in the Sand was what jumped to mind for me too! It's a fun little book.
posted by tavella at 7:54 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]

I like the idea of this guy working with teens. He seems like the kind of guy who'd talk to a 15-year-old about their interests and be able to recommend five books that could change their lives, and also drop hints on gaming the system that would help them through the next 50 years' worth of navigating bureaucracy. Kids don't even know what they don't know, and talking to somebody who knows a lot of random shit is valuable even for knowing how much random shit there is out there to learn.

It's a shame you have to have millionaire parents to afford him. In a better world he'd be working at the public library or running a used book and record store.
posted by smelendez at 10:25 PM on June 3 [9 favorites]

There are gradual students, and then there are undergradual students.
posted by johnabbe at 1:18 AM on June 4 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: in-fucking-sufferable.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:15 AM on June 4

This dude is living my dream, full stop.

And yeah, he's probably a real pill.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:16 AM on June 4 [1 favorite]

My uncle was a disabled vet who did this with non-ivy institutions. I think he was more of a chronic class auditor than a degree collector. He was a polyglot, we all looked up to him, and one of his hobbies was mentorship/prodigy production. In a world where the cost of education and the cost of living were lower I think you’d see more of this sort of… alternative lifestyle. This is also an interesting answer to a question I’ve had about “what happens to people who enter and graduate really young?” They make the news when they do that, but seldom appear to reemerge as prominent in their chosen fields so I wondered about burnout, the impact of the academic version of show business parents pressuring them, etc.
posted by Selena777 at 4:35 AM on June 4 [6 favorites]

Selena777, that sounds actually pretty cool. Glad to see that your uncle was giving back.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 7:24 AM on June 4 [1 favorite]

College was the most fun I’ve ever had. Small classes, great faculty. I hated to graduate.

Back in the 80s there was something called Elderhostel. Seniors occupied otherwise vacant college campuses during summer months and took courses. I envied the participants and looked forward to doing them myself, but those programs have now vanished. Such a shame—it seemed like the perfect vacation to hang out and maybe learn to play the banjo, throw a pot or work on another language.
posted by kinnakeet at 7:32 AM on June 4 [6 favorites]

@kinnakeet, memory triggered! I had older neighbors who did Elderhostel every summer. Turns out it still exists under another name: https://www.roadscholar.org/
posted by scolbath at 10:40 AM on June 4 [2 favorites]

[H]e has donated more than $2,500 to the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr

So no basic biology classes were required for any of his 16 degrees, apparently.
posted by yellowcandy at 10:40 AM on June 4 [5 favorites]

In the mid-80's, while I was dilly-dallying around sneaking courses I didn't need, I would continually run into students (mostly male) who would be bitching about having to take electives in English, Art, Humanities, etc. "What good does it do me? This is stupid stuff that won't get me more money. Waste of time!" Also, they were the ones continually bitching about homework. They were invariably the ones who had the poorer writing skills and inability to frame a logical argument or to analize, relate, extrapolate ideas--or maybe they just didn't care. My feeling was, and is, that they were somewhat lacking as human beings and couldn't understand the importance of these classes and what they could teach them about working with other human beings. Frankly, I thought Biz and Computer majors were assholes.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:35 PM on June 4 [4 favorites]

I'd still be in college if I could figure out how to swing it. I thought I had done it by never taking History 102 but damn if they didn't mail a diploma to my parents' house and lo, there it was, Christmas break and my father was shouting - in his trademark mix of jocularity and rage - that I was the only person who ever graduated from college without knowing it. Anyway, I did. But I don't know anything about what happened after the industrial revolution.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:59 PM on June 4 [5 favorites]

I love learning, but my ability to self-direct that learning is pretty horrible. I would have loved a chance to stay as an undergrad, taking whatever courses I wanted to for as long as I wanted to. Even now, with a PhD in hand, I'd seriously consider taking undergrad courses in select subjects with the right professors if I were otherwise living a life of ease.
posted by mollweide at 1:42 PM on June 4 [2 favorites]

I live a 20 minute walk away from my college. This thread inspired me to go visit. A lot has changed, mostly for the best.

There is a little grove of regional trees that I helped plant close to graduation. It is all grown up, the air full of scents and insect and bird calls.

The library is amazing, with air conditioning and comfortable reading and working areas.

Even the food and coffee are good, there is now a choice of places to eat.

Ended up paying the 20 dollars for a 5 year alumnus ID. It is the best place within walking distance to go have a coffee and read a book under a tree.

What has not changed at all is that I can still not afford to pay for any of the classes there. I was really tempted to apply for one of the flexible course load grad programs, but they don’t do scholarships or financial aid for people who already have a degree.

College for me was the best of times and the worst of times. I do miss the intelectual stimulation and the quick friendships, would love to be able to take a class one day a week, like people do with temples and sports.
posted by Dr. Curare at 3:06 PM on June 4 [6 favorites]

I can't help but admire someone who figured out what he wanted to do with his life and then made it happen. I'm seeing a lot of "should"s here in terms of how people think he SHOULD be living his life but ... it's his life and he gets to live it however he wants. As for his debt to society or whether or not he's wasting resources: did we all forget about Bullshit Jobs? So many people have middle-class or upper-middle-class jobs that provide little to no value to society, but those jobs are so mundane that they're invisible to us. We'll never see a NY Times profile of them.

And really, it seems like going to school is his very involved hobby, which he funds with his consulting business (and yes, that business would probably qualify as a Bullshit Job now that I think about it). It's not all that different from someone who spends all their free time and money on their band, or their podcast, or making pottery, or running ultramarathons in exotic locales.

I guess by virtue of being the subject of a NYT profile, he's opened himself up for judgment, but if it's not something you'd enjoy doing, or you don't think it's a worthwhile endeavor ... you don't have to do it.
posted by lunasol at 3:32 PM on June 4 [5 favorites]

After finishing this article, I felt as if I'd been exposed to an irritant that made me want to sneeze, but I couldn't quite. It's hard to put into words exactly what is slightly offensive about this guy. I think it has to do with the idea of a man who's spent so much time in academia (which I hold in high esteem) and yet still seems so shallow. As the author observes: "One thing Bolger has not seemed to learn over the years is to introspect." I wanted to read about someone who had become a guru, but as others pointed out above, he seems like more of a dilettante.

The last bit where he's boasting about rubbing elbows with the elite in fancy clubs (as one of their servants!) reminded me of Cypher in the Matrix: "You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:22 PM on June 4 [2 favorites]

Sort of on topic: cat gets a doctoral degree (WaPo gift link). I can think of a lot of campus cats around here that would like a word.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:59 AM on June 5 [1 favorite]

His mother must be an incredible woman, for real. Wanted to prove her son could excel in school despite the dyslexia so much that he's about to be the US record holder for Excelling in School.
posted by subdee at 7:25 AM on June 5 [1 favorite]

There are those of us who in order to maintain professional licenses must complete a certain number of pdh per year. They need to be related to the field and can be seminars, workshops or college credits.
posted by JJ86 at 2:57 PM on June 5