Fox News host with art history degree: Students shouldn't take out loans to study poetry

last updated 2 March 2015

In a Cavuto on Business segment, Fox News host Dagen McDowell lamented college students' choice to "study poetry" — even though McDowell herself has a college degree in art history.

McDowell's statement came during a discussion of the "Corinthian 15," a group of students who declared a debt strike against their for-profit school, Everest College, a part of Corinthian Colleges, Inc. The students are refusing to pay their federal loans, claiming that their degrees led to low-paying jobs or unemployment, thanks to a lack of government oversight and "bogus job-placement statistics," Newsweek reports.

McDowell didn't agree with the debt forgiveness proposal, suggesting the students should have known what their loans entailed. "Why does anybody think it's a good idea to take out $200,000 in debt and then go study poetry?" McDowell said during the show. But as Because Finance is Boring has discovered, McDowell's art history degree from Wake Forest University would cost roughly $188,480 today. Check out the Cavuto on Business segment, including McDowell's remark, in the video below. —Meghan DeMaria