Unemployment in the haiku industry is still undefeated.
By Robert Scucci
| Updated
Ever wonder what happened to the raunchy college comedy? Animal House (1978). Road Trip (2000). Van Wilder (2002). The list goes on and on, but then drops off hard around the mid-aughts. As we approached the 2010s, we stopped getting raunchy college party movies, and instead got a wave of films like The Hangover (2009) and its sequels, which are about grown adults acting like college kids in places like Las Vegas. So what happened? The answer is simple. The illusion of carefree college life was shattered during the 2008 recession, and it never recovered.
Starting with Millennials, the idea that college automatically improves your adult life started to fall apart. Unless you’re in a hyper-specialized field that requires formal education, a lot of people on the wrong side of their 30s will tell you the same thing. They’re not working in their field of study, they’re earning far less than a livable wage from a single full-time job, they’ve had to lean on gig work to close the gap, and they’re all thinking some version of, “I could have done this without being buried in debt.”
The Top Gun Parallel
Before getting further into why the raunchy college comedy disappeared, it helps to look at a genre that still works as a measuring stick: military porn.
Films like Top Gun (1986), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Black Hawk Down (2001), Act of Valor (2012), and Lone Survivor (2013) all share something in common. They glorify military life. Yes, they show the horrors of war, but they’re framed through a hero’s journey. Even if you enlist knowing your life is on the line, there’s still a clear upside for people who are built for that lifestyle.
You can be trained in fields like IT or logistics during your service and transition into stable work afterward. There were even reports of U.S. Navy representatives appearing at Top Gun: Maverick (2022) screenings, which coincided with a spike in recruitment interest tied to the film’s portrayal of the lifestyle.
Here’s the difference. Compared to raunchy college comedies, movies like Top Gun are not necessarily selling a lie. Most people understand the risks of military service. But the infrastructure being sold is real. If you complete your service honorably, there is a clear path forward. You can stay within the system or move into the private sector with experience that translates.
You can’t say the same thing about a feminist studies and basket weaving degree from even the most prestigious private university. Last time I checked, unemployment in the haiku industry is still undefeated.
The Lie That Was Sold
Melanie Hanson’s “Average Cost of College & Tuition,” published in February 2026, breaks down tuition across public and private universities, both in-state and out-of-state. The takeaway is straightforward. Many graduates walk away from a bachelor’s program with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and in some cases much more depending on the school and living situation.
That means kids who can’t legally rent a car, drink alcohol, get a tattoo, or purchase a lottery ticket are encouraged to take on long-term predatory loans and pause their lives for four years. The opportunity cost alone “can ultimately cost upwards of $500,000.”
Most people my age were part of the last wave of kids who were told that a degree guaranteed a better life. We were told it didn’t matter what we studied, as long as we got the degree. We were told that without it, we’d be stuck in menial, low-paying service jobs, as if honest hard work in any industry isn’t just that: honest, hard work. Now, in 2026, I’ve lost count of how many people I know with advanced degrees who are bartending because it pays more than their chosen field of study.
I can’t speak for everyone, but from kindergarten through 12th grade, the messaging was constant. We all remember authority figures pointing to the school janitor or someone wearing a hard hat and saying, “If you don’t go to college, this could be you.” Meanwhile, a lot of blue-collar workers I know who skipped college and went straight into the workforce or military are now in a position to retire early or pivot careers without experiencing total financial collapse.
And we all remember the Education Connection ads. The waitress sings about how a degree would lead to a bigger salary (that’s the rhyme). We also remember decades of raunchy college comedies selling the same dream. Party for four years, then walk into a stable white-collar life.
The Reality, And The Genre’s Downfall
By the early 2000s, most of us knew college wasn’t just toga parties and running from the dean after filling the campus pool with instant mashed potatoes. What we believed was that if we worked hard early, we could relax later.
Even then, college comedies still leaned into feel-good endings. Road Trip wraps with everyone’s lives improving. Accepted (2006) ends with personal growth and forward momentum. The illusion was still there, just softened. Expectations were already shifting, and the tone reflected that.
Then the 2008 recession hit.
Speaking from experience, the economy collapsed while I was deciding whether to matriculate as a Junior. I doubled down and finished my degree. I lived at home, worked full-time, and commuted to a state university. I still ended up over $80,000 in debt, with payments starting before my diploma even arrived in the mail.
Six months after graduating, I was paying $700 a month and still making $12.50 an hour flipping burgers.
This situation wasn’t unique to me, and it felt like it was becoming the new expectation. I eventually landed a corporate job, but it required a three-hour round-trip commute that cost about $10,000 a year in gas and maintenance. The job paid $30,000, before taxes. This was considered by many to be gainful, post-grad, white-collar work. Meanwhile, my bartending friends made more money, had nicer things, and zero debt. They could afford to live alone.
Since then, the raunchy college comedy didn’t disappear overnight. It mutated. The behavior is still there, but it shifted to older characters. Neighbors (2014) is technically college adjacent, but the frat house is framed as a nuisance. The main character isn’t aspiring to that lifestyle. He’s disgusted by it.
Movies like The Package (2018) picked up some of the slack, but the setting changed. The antics happen at home during spring break for a bunch of college-bound teenagers, not on campus. Everybody still lives with their parents. It feels like Hollywood recognized that the traditional college fantasy no longer landed the same way, even though some of the humor from those films still did.
When the audience stops believing in the premise, the genre has to adapt.
Lower Your Expectations, And You’ll Never Be Disappointed
So is college worth it? Maybe. That’s a personal decision you have to figure out for yourself.
As a parent with two kids under eight, I think about this constantly. I don’t want to set them up for failure or lock them into decades of loan payments that limit their options to live a meaningful life. There are other paths. Starting a business. Taking a risk on a startup. Learning a trade.
Right now, I’m neck deep in gig work because most job listings, according to LinkedIn, require a Master’s degree for entry-level roles, pay what my first corporate job paid 16 years ago, offer no benefits, and still expect you to show up on site and play dressup. I’ve told recruitors that if I ended up working for them, it would set me back, while simultaneously destroying my work/life balance. In so many words, they agreed with me.
Imagine spending eight years in higher education just to land there.
At that point, movies like Van Wilder stop feeling aspirational and start feeling like a joke, while something like Top Gun suddenly looks like a more honest pitch.
