2011-05-15
Explanation
This comic is a four-panel strip about a college student who brags about gaming the education system. In the first panel, a blonde student proudly declares: "I never read anything for my classes. I just study an hour before the exam and get an A." In the second panel, he continues boasting: "I don'''t remember ANYTHING after the test!" In the third panel, he smugly tells someone: "Heh. Universities are a bunch of suckers." The fourth panel delivers the punchline as a woman (possibly an administrator or loan officer) hands him a document saying: "That'''s all very interesting. Here'''s your student loan debt statement," to which he nervously responds: "Oh MAN I hope this is worth it."
The joke highlights the irony of a student who thinks he is cleverly cheating the system by doing minimal work and retaining nothing, not realizing that he is actually cheating himself. He is paying enormous sums of money (via student loans) for an education he is deliberately not receiving. The "suckers" are not the universities -- which get paid regardless of whether the student learns anything -- but rather the student himself, who will be saddled with debt for a degree that taught him nothing.
The votey bonus panel shows the comic'''s author, Zach Weiner, drawn as a disheveled, shirtless man saying: "Old man Weiner disapproves of your behavior, imaginary college student!" This is a self-deprecating acknowledgment that the comic comes across as a bit preachy or curmudgeonly, with Weiner casting himself as an old man shaking his fist at the youth.