Inspired by The Onion, Amanda Krauss of Worst Professor Ever imagines a news story: Education Secretary to Nation’s Youth: ‘Stop Getting So Many Fucking Degrees’.

WASHINGTON – Despite pressing budget talks, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan . . . took a moment to remind the “I’m special” generation that they are “basically a bunch of punk-ass kids” who have been victimized by universities selling delusions of grandeur. He urged the nation’s youth to adopt a more realistic view of the world and accept their place as helots in the Spartan tradition, sacrificing themselves in service of the nation’s competent elite.

Duncan also had choice words about post-graduate degrees. “More education is not the answer,” he said sternly, suggesting that if the piece of paper was “so goddamn important,” today’s technology allows us to print degrees at home and save thousands of dollars to invest in real economic growth. While he admitted that those already holding advanced degrees were “kind of screwed” he noted that there was still time for them to put down their copies of Marx and roll up their sleeves, already.

“Tea Party members cheered the President’s rejection of godless book learning,” while tenured professors applauded the new approach, Krauss writes.

“We’ve been trying to get rid of the students for years,” confessed one professor. “I’m just glad someone said it, you know?”

Via Lee Skallerup of College Ready Writing, who responds to the New York Times’ story on the master’s degree as the new bachelor’s:  It’s a way to keep young people out of the labor market.

On a Facebook post, Krauss calls the master’s degree “the new fry cook certification.”