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Smerconish

Lone Actors, Online Extremes, A Politics Of Despair; What Is More Of A Cause Of Political Violence By Young Men?; Education Now Defines American Politics. Rankings Obsession Is Misguided, Says College Expert. Aired 9-10a ET

Aired September 27, 2025 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[09:00:32]

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN ANCHOR: Twenty-six, 24, 24, 25, 20. I'm Michael Smerconish. Today in Los Angeles, those numbers may tell us more about political violence than ideology ever could. In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination and a gunman's attack on an ICE facility in Dallas, there's been no shortage of partisan finger pointing. Each side reading into the facts whatever suits their political interests.

President Trump has claimed this is all a left wing phenomenon. The data say otherwise, whether it's drawn from the ADL, the Cato Institute, or our recent guest Robert Pape at the University of Chicago, violence exists on the left and the right. President Trump even admitted as much at Kirk's funeral when he said no side in American politics has a monopoly on disturbed or misguided people. He should have stopped right there. Because the common denominator in so much of this violence isn't ideology, it's age and mental health.

John Wilkes Booth was 26 when he killed Abraham Lincoln. Lee Harvey Oswald, 24 when he killed JFK. Sirhan Sirhan, 24 when he killed RFK. John Hinckley Jr. 25 when he nearly killed Ronald Reagan. Thomas Matthew Crooks, just 20 when he opened fire on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. James Earl Ray, he's the outlier. He was 40 when he killed Martin Luther King Jr.

The pattern holds for school shooters, Columbine's killers, 17 and 18, Virginia Tech, 23, Sandy Hook, 20, Parkland, 19, Uvalde, 18. Again and again the numbers fall in the late teens and the early 20s. And it extends to other recent high profile cases. Luigi Mangione, 26 when he allegedly killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Robin Westman, who killed two and injured 21 at the Annunciation Catholic Church before committing suicide, 23.

Tyler Robinson, suspected of killing Charlie Kirk, charged with killing Charlie Kirk, 22. The Dallas ICE gunman, 29. Maybe you're thinking there's nothing new about this. I mean, Billy Joel told us back in 1973 in "Captain Jack," "You're 21 and still your mother makes your bed. And that's too long." Young men adrift is not a new story. What is new is the impact of technology. Richard Louv saw it all coming 18 years ago when he wrote "Last Child in the Woods." Jean Twenge, the San Diego psychologist, put a date on it in her bestseller "iGen" when she showed that 2012 was the tipping point, the year when more than half of Americans owned a smartphone, Facebook bought Instagram, the selfie era began, kids social lives moved online to smartphones, social media and high speed Internet. And what followed?

Less hanging out with friends, less sleep. Rising rates of mental health problems, spikes in self harm and suicide. And young men, they've borne the brunt. As Scott Galloway told me here last week, the prefrontal cortex in the male is 18 months behind the female. It doesn't catch up until he's 25, he's more risk aggressive, more likely to pursue dopamine.

And then add in big tech, the platform's designed to monetize anger. Or as Scott put it, they've essentially built the largest rage machines in history. And the result shows up in the data, take your pick, joblessness, friendship, suicide. The New York Times Jia Lynn Yang recently wrote this, "The most dangerous element in our society may well be hopelessness. In a 2023 Harvard study, one in three young adults 18 to 25 reported feeling lonely.

More than half said they lacked a sense of meaning or purpose. Only 19 percent trusted the federal government to do the right thing most or all of the time. And mortality rates tell the rest of the story. Until 2010, deaths among 25 to 44 year olds were declining. Since then, they've stalled and worsened after COVID. Young adults in America now dying at higher rates than in any other wealthy nation from overdoses, car crashes, diabetes, alcohol, homicide and suicide."

So yes, politics can act as a trigger, but the through line is age and mental health. Young men vulnerable, isolated, angry, living in a world that profits from their rage. By the way, none of this excuses their acts nor individual impetus but it does explain them, which is why we should stop tabulating violence by whether it came from the left or the right and start focusing on the underlying issue, the crisis of young men in America.

[09:05:14]

This leads me today's poll question at smerconish.com, which is more of a cause of political violence by young men, is it ideology or is it mental health?

Jia Lynn Yang, Senior Ideas Writer at the New York Times, joins me now. Her latest piece, "Political Violence isn't new, but something about this moment is."

Jia Lynn, thank you so much for being here. You have paid attention, reported on all of these high profile shooting incidents in the last decade plus. The through line that I've identified really comes from your analysis. It's despair, right?

JIA LYNN YANG, FORMER NATIONAL EDITOR, THE NEW YORK TIMES: It's really striking when you look at these shootings, when they happen. And it can be everything from the Kirk assassination to your more typical, unfortunately high school shooting. And immediately you start asking, OK, who did this? What's their story? And it's just so striking over so many years of working with reporters on these pieces that you often -- more often than not find a young man who is socially isolated, struggling to hold down a job.

You know, you just saw with Dallas last week, the more we find out about this guy, he was spending thousands of hours playing video games even in recent weeks. And they're not, in these cases, leaving a trail of, you know, online writings where they're very political. You know, in the Kirk case, that killer, suspected killer, did not even vote in the 2024 election. So it just makes you think there's something else going on. Certainly these are political acts of violence.

They have political ramifications that are quite serious for our entire society. But when you begin to look at the individual people, I think the story just gets so much more complicated.

SMERCONISH: I'm not looking to excuse any of the politics either. It's not a dodge. I'm just suggesting that we look more deeply at what's really going on here. And something you made me appreciate and realize, and I don't even like to say their names, so I'll put it this way, the shooter in Butler who shot President Trump, I mean, when you look at some of the background that we now understand, it could easily have been President Biden, right? I mean, he had both of them on his radar, so to speak.

It almost reminds me -- it does remind me that John Hinckley, it's not so much that he had an obsession with President Reagan, he was obsessed with, help me, the actress, Jodie Foster.

YANG: Jodie Foster, yes.

SMERCONISH: Yes. He was -- right? And so, if it -- if it weren't Reagan, it may have been somebody else. Your thoughts?

YANG: I think the Butler assassination attempt is really important to look at. You know, I have colleagues at the New York Times who, a year later, they were thinking, this is still a weird case. Like, how did this guy nearly, really nearly murder President Trump, as we all know, just by centimeters, essentially. And what's astonishing is that when you go back and these reporters did, and you go digging and digging, you interview everyone you can find, total cipher. All we know, really isolated, you know, probably suicidal at this point we kind of know because just like the ICE shooting this past week killed himself after, you know, after shooting the gun.

So again, I would say that that case is really important for us to understand, right? I mean, the president was nearly killed in the height of a political campaign, and in that one, again, total mystery what happened.

SMERCONISH: The political shooters really do seem, and I -- in my opening commentary, I put them in the same category as the school shooters. What parallels, what differences do you see? YANG: I think what you see as a parallel is, you know, people who appear to be fundamentally lost.

SMERCONISH: Yes.

YANG: You know, you see, again, the Dallas shooting, the more we learn about this guy, can't hold down a job. The people who, you know, interacted with him just said there was something deeply off. And I honestly think those quotes that you're seeing about that shooter, you could interchange -- you could exchange them with any, you know, high school shooter that we've seen in recent years. And so there's something going on where the person is so lost that they believe that this is kind of the thing to do.

We're also seeing that these shooters are noticing other events that are also shootings. So they're sometimes looking up other people who've become essentially infamous for doing this. You know, these are people whose names we would never have heard of otherwise and they kind of go out in this blaze of violence, and suddenly we are aware of their existence. Again, we can never fathom what is happening inside these people's minds. Obviously, something is incredibly disturbed, but there's something where they are, you know, kind of lost.

No one knows who they are, no one maybe even notices them, and they suddenly do this thing that demands attention. And we've seen that with the shootings at schools as well.

SMERCONISH: And, Jia Lynn, it also puts an additional onus on law enforcement, I imagine, because if it were as simple as some of the politicians are seeking to make it, that it's coming from this direction, no, it's coming from this direction and it's organized and so forth, if it were that, then law enforcement could infiltrate whomever the perpetrator or their group might be. But how do you know who's going to be next if the origin is an individual with despair?

[09:10:19]

YANG: This part seems terrifying to me, honestly. You know, you -- this is not the Weather Underground. This is not the KKK, right? These are not people who are showing up at meetings. They're not participating in political campaign and suddenly they burst into view.

And I think you're right. If you were -- if you're at the FBI and you're trying to prevent the next one, I'm not entirely sure where you would begin.

SMERCONISH: Your analysis is great, by the way. I don't know if you have a return monitor, but there's my print copy all marked up because I just thought it was -- it was so rich with data. And the debate is lacking in data which you bring to the table. So thank you. Appreciate you being here.

YANG: Thanks for having me.

SMERCONISH: OK, your reaction via social media. Follow me, by the way, in the world of X, OK, or subscribe to my YouTube channel, and that's how your comment gets up on the screen. Retired Florida Trucker Frank, in the current political violence, the bullets are flying in one direction. Left to right.

OK, Retired Florida Trucker Frank, that's just not true. It's just not true. And again, let's talk data. Go look at the ADL, go look at Cato. Cato has a great analysis on this.

Or listen to Robert Pape from the University of Chicago because I find each of them to be credible sources and they've crunched all the numbers and the bottom line is it's coming from all sides. It's coming from all sides.

I want to know what you think. Go to my website at smerconish.com, answer today's poll question, what is more of a cause of political violence by young men, ideology or mental health? I'll give you the results at the end of the hour.

Up ahead, who you vote for may no longer come down to, you know, where you live, red state, blue state, but rather how far you went in school. Next, a new study uncovers the growing education divide and it's not just among voters, it's among lawmakers as well.

Make sure you sign up for my newsletter when you're casting your ballot at smerconish.com, you'll get the work of prize winning illustrators like Steve Breen.

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[09:16:34]

SMERCONISH: You used to be able to predict somebody's vote based on their race or geography, you know, red state, blue state. Not anymore. According to veteran Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik, the new fault line in American politics, education. In fact, Democrats have been losing ground with non-college educated voters for decades while becoming increasingly reliant on college graduates to win elections. A strategy that Sosnik calls not exactly a winning formula.

Here's why. Take a look at this graph. In 2024, Republicans won 14 of the 15 least college educated states. Democrats carried 14 of the 15 most college educated states. But here's why the breakdown matters, nearly 60 percent of eligible voters in the U.S. do not have a four year degree.

Now take that divide in the electorate and look at who's representing them. In 1973, Harvard degrees were fairly evenly split in the House of Representatives. But today nearly 15 percent of House Democrats have a Harvard degree. House Republicans just two percent. And it's not just Harvard, a new study found that nearly half of Democrats in Congress hold the degree from a elite institution.

Republicans overwhelmingly come from non-elite universities. So what does that mean for who gets elected and who gets heard and who gets left behind? Joining me now is one of the authors of that study, Professor Alan Wiseman, Associate Provost and Professor of Political Economy at Vanderbilt. Professor, thanks for being here. Summarize your findings, your data, what did you do?

ALAN WISEMAN, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: Great. Thanks so much for having me here.

So you started to lead into some of the main top line findings of what we uncovered. And drawing on data from 1973 up until 2023, we're able to document the ways in which really we witnessed a profound change in the places that our elected officials in the U.S. Congress, attended undergrad, graduate school, professional school and the like. Dating back to 1973, we saw that in the U.S. House of Representatives, about 40 percent of Republican representatives had attended what we would identify as elite educational institutions. And I could get into that in just one second.

But then if we fast forward about 50 years later, that number or that proportion has gone down to about 15 percent of Republican members of the U.S. House. We see a similar downward trend among Republican members of the U.S. Senate. Back in 1973, about 50 percent of members of the U.S. Senate who are Republicans attended elite educational institutions. If we fast forward about 50 years, the end of our study goes to 2023, we see that proportion has gone down to about 35 percent. And if we fast forward to the most current Congress, so the 119th Congress that convened back in January, that proportion has fallen even further.

Only about 26 percent of current sitting Republican members of the U.S. Senate attended what we would identify as elite educational institutions. Whereas the proportion of Democrats over the last 50 plus years has basically remained the same, about 50 percent of Democrats in the House and Senate.

SMERCONISH: So you heard me reference Doug Sosnik and education being the new tell as to how somebody's going to vote. I think your data kind of raises a chicken and egg question, right? I mean, is this a response to the electorate shifting allegiance, Democrat to Republican, Republican to Democrat? In other words, is this because of what's going on among voters?

[09:20:03]

WISEMAN: No, that's a great question. So even though it's not the main focus of our study and auxiliary analysis, we're able to look to see if there's any relationship between elite educational attendance, elite educational institution attendance and Republican or Democratic vote shares in the House and Senate. And at least in terms of general elections, we're able to demonstrate that on the Republican side, there's basically no relationship between the vote shares that Republican members of the House and Senate receive in their general elections and whether or not they attended an elite educational institution.

Now, that being said, we don't have the data or all the data on primary elections, so we can't see whether or not people do better in their primaries. But you know, thinking broadly about these chicken and egg problems that you alluded to, this raises some broader questions about the ways in which party elites, when they go about trying to recruit candidates, who are the types of candidates that they look for? And if we take a look back, you know, about 30 plus years ago now, to what soon to be Speaker Newt Gingrich was doing in the early 1990s, is that he was actively cultivating a new cadre of Republican candidates and he was explicitly trying to look for candidates who did not represent, you know, the Republican establishment, for lack of better phrase. And if we look back to the 1970s, I mean, the Republican establishment were people that who by and large had attended elite educational institutions.

SMERCONISH: What if --

WISEMAN: So we see that many of the candidates that he recruited, who ultimately ran --

SMERCONISH: Yes.

WISEMAN: -- and won and were seated in the 104th Congress, didn't attend these institutions, and then they moved on the Senate and the like.

SMERCONISH: Professor, what if anything, does this have to do with effectiveness, collegiality, getting stuff done?

WISEMAN: Great, great questions. So one of my positions, I'm the co- director for the Center for Effective Lawmaking with Craig Volden at the University of Virginia, where we explicitly try to understand what contributes to and detracts from the ability of members of Congress to advance their sponsored bills to the lawmaking process. So we were really interested, along with our co-author, Jonathan Wai, as to whether or not there's really any relationship between elite educational institution attendance and lawmaking effectiveness. And what we found is that on the Republican side, there really isn't. If you attended an elite educational institution or non-elite educational institution, there's really no relationship between whether or not you're more or less successful at advancing your agendas.

What we did find, however, is that there's a really strong relationship between how people vote in Congress and how liberal their voting records are and whether or not they attended elite educational institutions. And more specifically, we found that for both Republicans and Democrats, those members who attended more elite educational institutions, controlling for other things, tend to vote in more liberal ways than those who didn't. So --

SMERCONISH: OK. That's --

WISEMAN: -- thinking about the fact over the last 50 plus years has been huge --

SMERCONISH: I was just going to say that's going to -- that's going to foster for right or wrong. That's going to foster the narrative of, oh, see that, you know, you went to Harvard and -- or Yale and you got brainwashed from being there and you came out liberal. I don't know. I don't know how you went in to those places. I interrupted you. Go ahead and finish your thought.

WISEMAN: Oh, no, no. Well, two things. First of all, you're right. We have no idea from our data or more generally what the ideological positions these people were going into these institutions. But thinking about the broader trends of what this means, over the last 50 years, we've seen a notable decrease in the proportion of Republicans who have attended these elite educational institutions.

And given the relationship between elite educational institutional attendance and policy liberalism and voting, what we're seeing is that these trends are moving the same direction. At the same time we're seeing essentially the breakdown of a single bipartisan class in Congress. It's no longer the case that a large proportion of members of the House and Senate had a common formative educational experience. They're going to different places, they're experiencing different things, they're being presented with different opportunities. At the same time that's happening, we're also seeing a notable increase in the rise in ideological polarization both across parties and especially within the Republican Party, where many commentators have documented the ways in which the voting patterns of Republican members of Congress have been shifting rightward substantially in recent years.

SMERCONISH: Fascinating stuff. Really, really amazing.

Professor, thank you so much for being here to share your data.

WISEMAN: Great. Thanks a lot for the opportunity.

SMERCONISH: Social media reaction, from the world of X formerly known as Twitter, follow me on X, it begins by segregating college bound young people from the rest. Internships versus summer jobs, et cetera. I went to college, but I also worked in kitchens, construction, et cetera. We're grooming segregation from the get go.

Right. Robert, dare -- do I need to say, we need to mingle, we need to get out of our bubbles and spend time with people who are not like us. By the way, relative to Professor Wiseman and all of that data, he's not saying, I mean, he's just analyzing and crunching the numbers. And I'm not saying, oh, this is a bad thing. You know, fewer of the Republican legislators graduated from so called elite institutions. I just think it's an interesting phenomena.

And I also note, I'll tell you one other thing about this, I note that Ted Cruz has a laugh line. He'll speak of having done his undergraduate work at Princeton and then going to law school at Harvard. I don't know. You tell me that somebody went to Princeton, then they went to Harvard, I'm impressed. But he then says, so I've got a lot of apologizing or a lot of explaining to do.

[09:25:16]

And you know, in Republican circles, like that's a funny thing. Like he's almost having to say, like, yes, don't hold that against me. I wouldn't hold that against you. But I also think that it's great that so many state schools, and we're going to get into this in just a moment, are represented as well because it shows a good mix. So there you go.

I want to remind you, go to my website at smerconish.com, answer today's poll question, what's more of a cause of political violence by young men, ideology or mental health? Can't wait to see the result on that. Sign up for the newsletter when you're there.

Soon to come, your social media reaction to my commentary. And so you think that Harvard, you're speaking of Harvard, you think Harvard's your dream school? Hold on, because my guest says, think again. He argues there's a better way to pick colleges and it starts with ignoring those rankings.

Plus, I want you to hear what I had to say about the Comey indictment last night when I was on with Nancy Mace, Bill Maher's "Real Time." The precedent that the Comey indictment could make is something that I'm eager for you to hear.

Sign up for that newsletter when you're voting on the poll question. You will get the work of prize winning illustrators like Scott Stantis.

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[09:30:55]

SMERCONISH: Former FBI director James Comey will soon make his first court appearance after being indicted by the justice department. I had my own take on this subject last night on "Real Time With Bill Maher."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SMERCONISH: Here's my starting point relative to Comey. I did not believe that Donald Trump should have been prosecuted by Alvin Bragg in the porn case. I did not believe that Donald Trump should have been prosecuted by Fani Willis in the Georgia case. I did not believe that Letitia James should have brought that civil suit against Donald Trump based on his business dealings.

I said all of that on radio and on television, not to be defensive of Trump, but as an attorney, I thought they were political prosecutions, each of them. This is worse. This is worse because now it's the head of government directing the indictment of a former head of the FBI. And what I worry about the most is the precedent that it will set -- somebody running for governor, maybe somebody running for attorney general, who's going to feel comfortable in saying so and so deserves to face charges.

And most importantly, what it does is it causes a further diminished level of confidence in our institutions, especially the DOJ. You know, Bill, when people used to say, we're going to bring in the feds, we need a federal investigation, it's because that carried the imprimatur of impartiality.

That's gone. Nobody has respect now for the federal government and this is going to make it worse.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SMERCONISH: It's a pretty good soundbite, right? But the only thing anybody has going to remember is that blazer, Catherine. Am I right? That sport coat.

I had a choice to make last night when I reached into my closet, because I packed a couple of them. I'm like, am I really going to go with that one? Yes, what the hell? Why not?

One other thing I want to say about that last night is that when talking about Comey, I felt the need, especially with an audience that might not be familiar with me the way that you're familiar with me, I hope, I felt the need to lay out what I had said about those Trump indictments, because I didn't want to come off as, oh, you know, you're just another person on TV going after Donald Trump.

I'm not here for or against Trump. I felt the need to educate people and say, if you don't know, here's where I was with those prosecutions of Trump. And, you know, this, the CNN audience knows this because so many of you are still angry when I said that the porn case shouldn't have been brought, and Fani Willis shouldn't have brought that case, and Letitia James shouldn't have brought that civil suit. And that Jack Smith, frankly, made mistakes because he was racing against the clock to try and get Trump to trial before the election. And it all ended up benefiting President Trump.

Having said that, in this case, the indictment of Comey and, you know, we'll see how the facts pan out. We're going based on a paragraph of an indictment. But no, I don't like it for all the reasons that I told Bill Maher last night. It's a dangerous precedent and we are opening the door to, you know, people running for office, prosecutorial positions, attorneys general, governors, as I said.

Like, yes, when I get elected, you know, I'm going to go after so and so and it will just destroy whatever remaining confidence there might be in government and especially in law enforcement. And we can ill afford that. We can ill afford that.

OK. Sorry I got long winded. Social media reaction. What do we have?

The political violence we are seeing is the result of young men, yes, it's always a young man with mental issues who give up and want to commit suicide but need some attention as he does himself in. That is what needs to be addressed.

Amen, Jack Hoffman. I'll tell you something. I'm flying out here to California and I knew that I wanted to address the subject of violence because of all the left and right finger pointing. And I'm looking at the data, realizing that it's coming from both sides, and I'm thinking this is -- this is terrible that they're seeking political advantage by arguing whether a shooter comes from the left or the right.

And I start to do some research. Truly, 30,000 feet in the air, and I start to do some research on, like, who are these individuals and what's the common thread? Hang on, gang. I got to finish this point. It's really important.

[09:35:00]

And the first instance that I looked for was Lee Harvey Oswald, convinced that he was like 40, 45. How old do you think Lee Harvey Oswald was, right? And I see -- he's 24. Like 24? How old was John Wilkes Booth? Holy crap, he was 26.

And I go on and on and on. They're all in that same range. And now throw in technology. That's what we got to address.

OK. Don't forget to vote on today's poll question at Smerconish.com. What is more of a cause of political violence by young men, ideology or mental health? You know how I'm voting.

Still to come, my next guest says that the college game is rigged and parents are the enablers. And wait until you hear what students are doing just to get a second look from some of these schools. We'll do that next.

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SMERCONISH: Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale.

[09:40:01]

Spot anything in common? They top this year's U.S. News and World Report College Rankings, as per usual. But what if I told you that the schools you can't get into aren't even worth chasing in the first place?

Here's part of another list, Clemson, Fordham, Drexel, Howard, Michigan State University. They're part of a new Large Leaders Ranking, one built not on prestige, but on value, on access and outcomes. And the person behind this list is Jeffrey Selingo. He's a higher ed reporter, best-selling author, and a guy who actually sat inside admissions offices, including Emory, Davidson, and the University of Washington.

He watched how admissions decisions get made and wrote a bestseller called "Who Gets In |And Why: A Year Inside College Admissions." And now he's back with a new book, a companion book. It's called "Dream School: Finding the College That's Right for You." And in it, he's taking a blowtorch to what he calls a rigged game, a system that pushes families into a prestige arms race with sky high rejection rates, anonymous admissions, readers, and kids feeling that they have to save the world in order to get in.

According to Jeff Selingo, the game isn't just stressful, it's misguided. So, maybe we're chasing the wrong dream. Jeff Selingo joins me now with a radically different map to college success. So, what is the rigged nature of the current system?

JEFFREY SELINGO, AUTHOR, "DREAM SCHOOL": Well, Michael, the top U.S. News and World Report Rankings that you just showed, it's basically 7 percent to get into those colleges. That's the average acceptance rate of the colleges at the top of the U.S. News and World Report Rankings.

So, I'm not saying don't apply there. But basically, what we're trying to have students do is jump through all these hoops, twist themselves into a pretzel in high school, take as many AP courses as they can, take as many, you know, honors courses as they can, get As in everything, participate in every activity, do year-round sports.

Oh, by the way, save the world at the same time. All for an anonymous admissions officer on the other side of the desk who in the course of five or six minutes will make a decision on that student. And often they're so inundated with applications they want to accept somebody, but they can't. They just don't have enough room.

Because essentially the applications at the most selective colleges have jumped by three times over the last 20 years, threefold over the last 20 years. But the size of their freshman class is the same as it was 20 years ago. So, there's just no more spots for all these students who want to go there.

SMERCONISH: Well, we have this idea that scarcity equals quality. And in the book, you say that's not necessarily the case, and there's plenty of quality that can be found in a place that doesn't have scarcity as a key principle.

SELINGO: Indeed, we looked at the survey that Indiana University does nationally every year called "The National Survey of Student Engagement," right? This is what most parents want. In fact, I did a survey of 3,000 plus parents for the book and what they most want for their kids is to find friends and to have student success in college. And also, by the way, just be happy and find fulfilling jobs.

Well, Indiana does the survey. They do hundreds -- they survey hundreds of thousands of college freshmen and college seniors every year. We looked at the data for college seniors, and we found that they're just as satisfied on less selective campuses, campuses that accept 40 percent of students or 50 percent of students as they are on those most selective colleges.

Oh, and by the way, on those lesser selective colleges, you know, again, colleges that accept 40 or 50 or 60 percent, they actually have more interaction with their professors. I heard this so often, Michael, in my reporting, where these students would go to Columbia or Harvard or Yale or Stanford, and they wouldn't get to know their professors or they wouldn't get to do work with them because those professors were most interested in their graduate students.

SMERCONISH: Everything that you say, everything that I read in the book makes perfect sense. I wish I had the book 20 years ago because, you know, I'm finished with this process now.

But I have to say, it's hard not to get swept into it as a parent, especially depending on what part of the country you live in and what schools your kids are going to when they're not yet high school graduates. And like everybody is pursuing these schools. And I'm guilty as charged. So, is the message for parents or is the message for their kids, the students? SELINGO: Oh, this is definitely a message for parents. We asked them in this poll of 3,000 plus parents, we get, how important is prestige to you? Only 16 percent said it was very important. How important is it to your kids? Twenty-eight percent.

But here is where it got really interesting. We asked, how important is it to people in your community? Sixty-two percent. So, a lot of this is the signaling that goes on when we put that sticker on the back of our car to say, our kid goes to Stanford or Harvard or Yale or Princeton.

And if you're a parent who wants to get off that treadmill, which I'm encouraging in this book, I'm trying to give you permission to get off that treadmill, telling you what you should be looking for in a good school.

But you often think, well, if I do it, I'm going to look like a bad parent because all these other parents around me are pursuing this prestige race.

[09:45:00]

And for what reason? We're just putting a tremendous amount of pressure on our kids, Michael. And I just want to give parents permission to get off that because, by the way, the outcomes are just as good at these colleges we think of as less prestigious. And the only reason we think that is because they accept more students.

SMERCONISH: So, you know, mental health and the mental health of adolescents, young adults is a constant on this program. I spoke of it in my opening commentary yet again today. And what I'm thinking about in view of your book, Jeff, is the less stress that this might also provide because -- again, I know what that's like when you've -- how many AP courses have you taken, right? What is that project you're involved in?

I mean, somehow, we've -- we've sort of villainized the idea that in the summer you're going to go do what I did, which was work at a McDonald's, you know? Like, oh, I don't know how that's going to look on the resume when you need to apply to school. So, wouldn't it be great if everybody could take it down a notch and recognize the schools and you named them.

You break down by list in the appendix of your book, so you give a whole laundry list. But it could be good in terms of mental health aspect for our young people.

SELINGO: No doubt about it, Michael. And even if you end up doing all those things, and I agree with you, by the way, on summer work, right? I worked in a hospital kitchen as my first summer job, and it just taught me to get along with people of different ages who had different perspectives which, I think, is important for college today.

But even if you do all those things, even if you try to save the world, you do all these summer activities, you take all these classes, you participate in all these clubs, you still might not get in to those most selective colleges. And often I've talked to students who said, what did I do all that for?

Because they didn't want to do it. You should do what you do in high school because you want to do it, not because of how it's going to look to some admissions dean on the other side of the desk.

SMERCONISH: By the way, wouldn't it be great if the admissions dean on the other side would have some respect? Maybe they do and kids just don't know it. Would have some respect for Jeff Selingo working in a hospital kitchen or Michael Smerconish being the maintenance man at McDonald's.

You know, I think that the schools could do a solid -- if they let everybody know, you don't -- you don't need to, you know, be involved in a third world country when you're in 11th grade. Anyway, the book is great. The book is really, really great.

SELINGO: Thank you.

SMERCONISH: So, thanks for being here, Jeff. Appreciate it.

SELINGO: Thank you.

SMERCONISH: Social media reaction. From the world of X. Make sure you're following me on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Not as many conservatives go to elite universities because of a lack of free speech and demonization.

OK. So, Anita is now commenting. Leave it up there for a second if you don't mind. So, Anita is now back on the -- it's all education, so that's cool. But she's now talking about how, you know, fewer of the members of Congress are going to so-called elite institutions on the Republican side of the aisle. Not as many conservatives go to elite universities because of a lack of free speech and demonization of Republicans.

OK. Thank you. I wanted to take another look at that. So, you're saying that it's an inhospitable place. Maybe that's part of it. I mean, that certainly could be part of it. I think that it's a reflection of the changing electorate.

I mean, it's -- it's amazing. And Doug Sosnik pointed this out, 14 of the 15 -- 14 of the 15 least educated states went Republican in the Trump-Harris race. And the exact reverse is true. And education -- this is the takeaway. Education has now become the marker.

Like if I said to you, you can have one question to try and figure out how somebody voted in the last presidential race, you might say, well, tell me what state they live in. You know, red state, blue. Tell me the race of this individual.

But it turns out that probably what would be the biggest tell is what level of education do they have? That's not said in a demeaning way, dismissive way, negative way. It's just an observation, just an observation of where we are. You still have time to vote on today's poll question at Smerconish.com. What is more a cause of political violence by young men? Is it ideology or is it mental health? Subscribe to my newsletter while you're there. You'll get exclusive editorial cartoons from the likes of Jack Ohman.

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[09:53:30]

SMERCONISH: OK, there's the poll result so far. What is more of a cause of political violence by young men? Thirty-three thousand and change have voted. All right, 58 percent with what I believe to be the correct answer, mental health, not ideology.

Sure. And I'm not dismissive of the role of ideology, right, nor the role of provocative political speech. I think it's a contributing factor. But the common thread in all of this, like the school shootings, is despair. It's despair.

But you'd never know that by listening to all the politicians, right, as they are trying to use to their own political advantage these tragic events which is just horrible. But you get it. A majority of you get it. That's good. Social media reaction. What do we have?

If you keep yelling at the TV that one side of the political spectrum is made up of fascists, nazis, and are a threat to democracy don't be surprised if someone who is mentally ill thinks they need to take action. They go hand in hand, says Austin.

Austin, I'm not -- I'm not excusing the political speech. I don't engage in any of that, as you know. And I think that the politicians who do ought to be called out for it, and the media -- absolutely, the media. But this is more complicated than simply saying, oh, the left said this, the right said that. Next.

Michael, love your commentary but Comey has spent the last seven years saying Trump needs to be prosecuted along with his friends. Sorry, Comey put our country through hell. Screw Comey. I'm not here carrying Comey's water.

[09:55:01]

My point that I made has very little to do with Comey. Here's an irony. James Comey got Donald Trump elected.

I mean, 2016, the way he treated Hillary Clinton never should have said the things about her that he did read. Lanny Davis' book. He makes a convincing argument that Comey's outburst, treating her like she had been indicted, when she hadn't, arguably led to Trump's election victory. And now he's the guy that Trump wants indicted. One more, if I have time for it. I think I do.

Democrats winning in college educated states just proves that colleges have stopped being institutions of education. They have turned into institutions of indoctrination for the woke left. See, you're looking at that and you're saying you go to school. That was -- that was all four-year schools, not elite schools. And therefore, you get brainwashed. I think that's too simplistic of an explanation.

There has been a seismic shift among education and the role that it plays in where people vote. I mean, the working class, non-college educated used to be lockstep in the Democratic Party, and that those days are over.

If you missed any of today's program, you can always listen anywhere you get your podcasts. Thank you for watching. See you next week.

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