This 2006 op-ed from the New York Times ought to be required reading for every prospective college student and every politician that makes student loans available: “A Little Learning is an Expensive Thing.” It's William Chace, a former president of Emory and Wesleyan Universities. Excerpts:
The tuition increases here, just like those of our competitors, have outstripped the rate of increase in the consumer price index for years.
You will probably owe more than $20,000, on average, when you leave Laudable University. Graduates of public institutions will owe, on average, more than $15,000.
How will many of you begin your adult lives?
In serious debt. . . .
Laudable could be cheaper, but you wouldn't like it. You and your parents have made it clear that you want the best. That means more spacious and comfortable student residences (“dormitories,” we used to call them), gyms with professional exercise equipment, better food of all kinds, more counselors to attend to your growing emotional needs, more high-tech classrooms and campuses that are spectacularly handsome.
Our competitors provide such things, so we do too. We compete for everything: faculty, students, research dollars and prestige. The more you want us to give to you, the more we will be asking you to give to us. We aim to please, and that will cost you. It's been a long time since scholarship and teaching were carried on in monastic surroundings. . . .
Still on vacation, so slow blogging continues . . .
