There are some things in life that will always be cool. Examples: fast cars, finding money in your pockets and light-up shoes. Yep, always cool.

I’ve also heard that sticking it to the man is always cool. For me, the only “man” I can call out at the moment is college.

Biting the hand that feeds me is risky, but having a column grants me the writing right. And my future child will have the middle name Danger, so I’m prospectively off the hook. It’s simple logic.

Now down to brass tacks.

Look, I love my Marquette experience completely (or maybe just enough that I hope nobody with power or authority takes this column the wrong way). If I didn’t love it here, I wouldn’t have traveled 822 miles for it.  I’m just pointing out a teeny tiny crime that most, if not all, universities are guilty of, to some degree.

So what’s the big conspiracy? That college education is a phony tradition and a scam? That parents willingly jettison their kids off the houseboat to a place where they’ll certainly break down their moral virtues to survive their peer environment until a new person finally emerges just to be thrown into a rat race society?

Nope.  Financial aid. That’s the conspiracy.

For starters, just ignore all personal circumstances and all notions of actual need. That may sound like I’m ignoring the purpose of financial aid, but stick with me, because I am. For this conspiracy to work, we have to realize that need-based aid is only a student body’s conception, and not necessarily a university’s purpose.

Imagine a university accountant concludes that the actual amount of tuition needed to accommodate students and make reasonably expedient progress toward university goals is $5,000.

Next, suppose the university posts the going tuition rate at $15,000. Now imagine a runaway train with wheels on I-94 is going 145 mph during a monsoon race. Now forget that part, but keep your adrenaline pumping.

The kicker is the university then gives 90 percent of students a “scholarship” of some amount. Potential students will either think, “They’re giving me a lot of money, so I should go,” or “Tuition is expensive, it must be worth it.”

It’s a simple concept: Jack up the price, then give everyone a “discount.”

Now we’re left with every student paying more than the original average rate needed in the first place. Meanwhile, the university proclaims it’s honorable for having such a high percentage of students receiving aid, as if it’s tried ever so hard to accommodate individual needs.

The good news is we are led to believe the Marquette mothership would not deliberately betray our trust — understanding we aren’t complete imbeciles. Otherwise we’d be crashing into DPS squad cars, banging our heads into concrete walls and having Pauly D escort us to Aurora Sinai Medical Center.

Regardless, universities aim to promote positive images. We attend college to become the smart ones who later rise above the idiocy.

Still, universities want to look good during the present and the future even if to some extent it’s at the expense of their students.

Can we blame them if it’s ultimately for the sake of those students? Yes — but we don’t want to.

We like the scam. We like it so much that we keep the conspiracy going, by complaining about paying for college.

Yes, deep down in the pockets, paying for college hurts. And no matter how we pay or will pay for it, we demonstrate that we aren’t OK with it. But in our minds, going to college means so much more to us than the cost of financing it.

I am not suggesting a tuition increase, please, dear, sweet Society of Jesus.

Just because we’ll end up paying doesn’t make it fair to exploit that.

Still, scam or no scam, we take financial aid wherever we can get it. How else could we budget for fast cars and light-up sneakers, since surprise money pockets don’t go above $20.

Think I’ve accomplished nothing here? Think twice. I’ve proven that sticking it to the man is not always cool. (Hashtag twist ending.)