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Mark Zuckerberg appeared on the April 28, 2025, episode of the This Past Weekend podcast, hosted by comedian Theo Von. During his discussion, the Meta CEO and Facebook founder shared his candid thoughts on the evolving value of college education amid the rise in student debt.
Zuckerberg explained that the traditional cost-to-value ratio of college was increasingly failing, especially as student debt grew and job outcomes became less certain. He pointed out that the massive increase in tuition fees and the staggering $1.77 trillion in U.S. student loan debt signaled deeper systemic issues.
"There’s going to have to be a reckoning… People are going to have to kind of figure out whether that makes sense," Mark Zuckerberg said.
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According to Meta's official website, Zuckerberg studied computer science at Harvard University, where he launched Facebook. Yet, by 2004, he left Harvard for Palo Alto to work full-time on developing Facebook. Although a college dropout himself, Zuckerberg explained that most students opted for higher education to get better jobs, and a student loan was therefore unavoidable.
As per the Benzinga report dated April 29, 2025, data from the College Board showed that the average published tuition at public four-year schools reached $11,610 for in-state students in 2024. The tuition for private nonprofit colleges exceeded $43,000.
Considering such stats, Mark Zuckerberg told Von that many majors failed to get good-paying jobs because of the high student loans they had to repay.
"You graduate when you’re in debt … and you’re starting off in this big hole," Zuckerberg remarked.
Zuckerberg also noted that the increased tuition was making many Gen-Z students opt out of a college education and apply for non-traditional career pathways like boot camps, certificates, direct-to-work tech jobs, etc.
"It’s sort of been this taboo thing to say, like, maybe not everyone needs to go to college… I think people are probably coming around to that opinion a little more now than maybe like ten years ago," the Meta CEO noted.
Mark Zuckerberg criticizes 'sensationalist' media coverage during his podcast appearance
Mark Zuckerberg also used his time on Theo Von's This Past Weekend podcast to push back against what he described as "sensationalist" media coverage of social media by the mainstream media. He argued that people were not passive recipients of online information, emphasizing that individuals had the intelligence and autonomy to make their own decisions.
"There’s a version of history that says that individual people are very powerful and have a lot of kind of autonomy and ability to kind of go in the direction that they think is right," Zuckerberg added.
As per the Fox News article dated April 28, 2025, Zuckerberg's remarks came in the wake of Meta's controversial January decision to end its fact-checking program and scale back content moderation across Facebook, Instagram, and its other platforms.
As per the report, the policy shift was met with immediate backlash from advocacy groups and critics. Many critics also argued that removing guardrails on online content could open the door for misinformation, and content moderation across Meta was therefore necessary.
But Mark Zuckerberg challenged the premise during his podcast appearance, saying:
"And then there’s like all these other narratives where people try to kind of diminish peoples’ autonomy and authority."
He further argued that the media often misinterpreted the choices people made online, mistaking them for ignorance or gullibility.
“I’ve always been a person who really kind of believes that people understand—people are smarter than people think... And when they do things that like the media or whatever thinks don’t make sense; it’s generally because the media doesn’t understand their life, not because the people are stupid," the Meta CEO explained.
According to the Fortune article dated April 25, 2025, Mark Zuckerberg and his Meta team are currently busy taking "aggressive steps on Facebook" to reduce spam-based content on the platform and restore the "OG" Facebook experience for users.
