The price of higher education

The New York Times has a darkly humorous opinion piece about the cost of higher education and the expectations game:

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.

Laudable's surroundings, by the way, will remind you of where you came from. That'’s because your financial circumstances are pretty much the same as those of your classmates. More expensive schools have students from wealthier parents; less expensive schools draw students from families with fewer financial resources. More than half of the freshmen at selective colleges, public and private, come from the highest-earning quarter of households. Tell me the ZIP code and I'’ll tell you what kind of college a high-school graduate most likely attends.

Read the whole op-ed here. The author is William M. Chace, author of 100 Semesters: My Adventures as Student, Professor and University President, and What I Learned Along the Way, which I'll have to check out.