BuzzFeed is now passing off middle school trivia quizzes as education content while real vocational training programs—like a new part-time nursing school in Pennsylvania—fight for attention, showing exactly how far the country's respect for learning has fallen.
The contrast tells the whole story. One outlet asks you to "take this middle school quiz for your report card" as if classroom knowledge is a game show category. The other quietly reports that more than 230 nurses have already graduated from a Harrisburg program that just expanded to reach working students who need evening classes. The founders built universities to train citizens. We get listicles.
BuzzFeed's quiz, published as back-to-school content, promises to test "how much middle school knowledge actually stuck" across 20 subjects—from Punnett squares to the prime meridian. The reward is a fictional "report card." BuzzFeed framed the whole exercise as nostalgia, invoking "awkward school dances" and "aggressively decorated binders," reducing years of classroom instruction to a novelty. It is entertainment dressed up as education, and it reaches millions.
Meanwhile, the Mechanicsburg Patriot News reported that UPMC Shadyside School of Nursing at UPMC Harrisburg is launching a 32-month part-time diploma track for registered nurses. Applications are open through October 1, with evening-only weekday classes starting in January. First-year students will take pre-nursing courses at Harrisburg University, complete more than 900 hours of clinical rotations at UPMC facilities, and learn from UPMC faculty.
"I'm so excited to offer this new opportunity for those who want to become nurses in our region," Penny Lenig-Zerby, director of the UPMC Shadyside School of Nursing at UPMC Harrisburg, said in a news release. "A part-time program is something our UPMC staff and some of our interested applicants to the full-time program have been asking for since we opened our new school."
The school opened in fall 2022 and still maintains its 16-month full-time accelerated track. Scholarship, grant, and work-study opportunities may be available for eligible students who need to work around their class schedules at UPMC while earning their degree.
The Patriot News buried its story in a health section, treating real workforce training as a footnote. BuzzFeed pushed its quiz as featured content.
Follow the money: UPMC is a massive healthcare system investing in real infrastructure and real training capacity to produce workers the country needs. BuzzFeed is a click-driven platform that monetizes attention. One builds nurses. The other builds engagement metrics.
The question isn't whether Americans can still pass a middle school quiz. The question is whether the country still values the kind of practical education that produces the nurses it desperately needs—or whether learning is just content now.
