Many Americans have big feelings about “big government.” For some, it’s become shorthand for inefficiency, waste, and overreach. Critics say government spending and bureaucratic bloat are obstacles to economic growth and people’s individual success. But according to Scott Galloway, a serial entrepreneur and professor of marketing at New York University, that doesn’t paint the complete picture. In fact, he says, some of the most successful people alive owe their prosperity to “big government”—himself included.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Vice’s Shane Smith published in October, Galloway spoke about how he never would have been successful had UCLA not given him a chance. When he initially applied to the university as a teenager, he got rejected. He had a 3.1 GPA, and his SAT score was 1130 out of 1600.
“UCLA had a 74% admissions rate. When I applied, I was one of the 26% that didn’t get in,” Galloway told Smith. “I came home and broke down. I was really upset. I always thought I was smart. I was told I was smart, and I wanted to do something bigger.”
With his mother’s encouragement, Galloway appealed his case to UCLA, and met with an admissions officer. What happened next changed his entire outlook on life at the time.
“It literally inspired this upward spiral for me,” he said. “So I’m a product of big government. Everyone likes to s–tpost the government. California taxpayers and the regents of the University of California saved my ass.”
Attending UCLA redirected his life. Galloway went on to work at Morgan Stanley, pursued an MBA from UC Berkeley, and eventually founded L2, which sold to Gartner for $155 million in 2017. And he was able to give back to the school that gave him his start.
“This is a flex, but I’m going to make it. Three years ago, I gave $12 million back to UCLA,” Galloway said. “So guess what? Taking bets on unremarkable people pays off.”
Galloway said American universities have followed a much different philosophy since he was a teen. This year, he said, Vanderbilt’s admissions rate will fall below 4%, which is lower than Harvard’s, despite having fewer applicants competing for spots.
“When I grew up, America loved unremarkable kids,” he said, noting how the University of California system was essentially free for qualified students, funded by state taxpayers, and designed to democratize opportunities. Today’s higher education landscape, by contrast, functions like what Galloway calls “a hedge fund offering classes.” Universities with billion-dollar endowments are tightening admissions rather than expanding access, creating artificial scarcity that pushes costs upward.
The economic consequences extend far beyond college campuses. Young adults face unprecedented barriers to traditional markers of stability. Home prices have skyrocketed; student debt follows young people around like a shadow, even through bankruptcy; and today, as Galloway noted, one in five men at age 30 still lives with his parents.
“Unfortunately, now in America, the best indicator of your kid’s success is how much money you have,” he said. “And there’s something wrong with that.”
According to Galloway, public resources lead to opportunities, innovation, economic growth, and social mobility. But the system is currently optimized for exclusivity, concentrating wealth and generating resentment. As he sees it, the question facing America isn’t whether we can afford to bet on unremarkable people. It’s whether we can afford not to.
You can watch the full interview with Galloway and Shane Smith below.