Nice try to equate your Oberlin comrades to Potemkin sailors but we are not buying it.
They are still spoiled snowflakes who believe that serving unaccurate ethnic food is a form of oppression by White Man and demand gluten-free organic breakfast on the day they storm Winter Palace.
Seeing the building boom on pretty much every campus I have visited (new student unions, dorms, eateries – not cafeterias, exercise facilities, academic buildings, etc), the subject of this thread is easy to see. Big business of college formula: recruit students with facilities (selling the “college experience”), have TAs teach and professors research and publish.
While that’s a nice zinging statement, it misses my larger point which concurs with @OHMomof2 's point that complaints about school food aren’t limited to upper/upper-middle class American undergrads…especially those at Oberlin…but have been an ongoing issue around the world.
I cited a couple of examples including one from recent history(1989). Also, considering some of the expressed foodie sensibilities of many posters on CC, it wouldn’t surprise me if they reacted with outrage if college cafeterias served the same type of dorm food my father had as a recipient of a full scholarship with all associated expenses(books, room and board, etc) covered.
I mean…he regarded it as such he actually found Army food he had while doing his 2 years of mandated military service after college…including US military issued C-rations from the 1950’s quite delectable. Quite interesting considering most US military veterans/peacetime draftees during the '50s…including those from low income backgrounds mainly recounted how much they detested military food. Especially C-rations from the WWII era till the end of the '70s.
The food I ate in US Navy basic training (2011) was better than what they serve in the campus dining hall. What I cook is better than both.
I have an MRE in my room. I might eat it and compare it to the campus cafeteria.
I’ve heard from relatives who served within the last 20-30 years that the state of military food in dining halls and the MREs are a marked improvement compared with what their NCOs/COs who started their service during the Korean/Vietnam eras. Am hearing it’s now comparable to/better than average college dorm cafeteria food.
Also, not sure if this is always true, but the general consensus from relatives/friends who served in the armed forces and were stationed on bases run by another branch of service was the food from best to worst on average was:
Air Force
Navy (Especially carriers which a cousin was assigned after NROTC)
Army/Marines
Can’t speak to the Coast Guard as none of the friends/relatives I knew who served ever ate on a Coast Guard base.
I will say this that most people do not think about…
at my college professors (paid employees) got prime parking spaces and students the people paying got not only to pay for parking but got crappy spots. if you go to a hotel or restaurant etc… the employees get crappy parking and the guests get prime parking.
also the resident directors who got free room and board and $$$ got a full apartment with air conditioning. while the students got an old brick building that was 110 degrees (no AC)for the first and last 6 weeks of year. on a cruise the passengers get the prime rooms (those paying) and the crew sleep below deck and share rooms. it is kind of upside down if you think about it!
the special snowflakes at Oberlin were not complaining about the quality of sushi it was the " cultural appropriation" of the food. I am embarrassed for these kids.
@zobroward : If you think about it, you may start to take into account the fact that most restaurant workers and seamen are semi-skilled transients (and sometimes illegals being paid illegally), while professors are highly skilled veterans of decades of education and successive brutal, merit-based bottlenecks, many of whom could substantially increase their compensation by leaving the university. Also, in many university structures, the faculty are de facto the owners of the university, or at least among them, and that affects faculty compensation everywhere to some extent.
I have a monthly parking contract at a nearby hotel, by the way. The employees, the guests, and we monthlies all share the same lot. There’s a not-well-marked stairwell that’s more convenient to the employee entrance than the elevators, and the employees tend to park closer to that, but so do I, because it’s faster in-out, closer to my office, and gives me more stairs to climb. Also, I like having the secret code to the secret door.
In the college industry, the primary product is a sheepskin. A dorm room is an ancillary product-- in fact, many students are commuters and don’t even buy a dorm room. Imagine how many NYU obsessed applicants would happily pay $70k and sleep on a sheet of cardcard on the floor just to go to NYU.
In the hotel & cruise ship industry, a hotel room is the primary product. A hotel or cruise ship business wouldn’t last very long if it made its customers sleep on a sheet of cardboard on the floor.
I work at a college; we run the place on a shoestring budget. Costs to do business in higher ed are incredibly high, and new revenue streams are difficult to generate. For many, many schools, the reality of a declining population means that finances will get even tighter. Students absolutely are demanding more of staff and expecting more in terms of facilities and programming than they did even a few years ago. It is a difficult new day for higher ed.
jhs, that is one take on it. that is old school thinking. and all professors are not of the same value. some are only employable in a college setting. a biochemical engineering professor doing med research is of great value…some others not so much…like those in what we referred to as underwater basket weaving majors.
Nothing is new here,
@Roger_Dooley is at least right on the professor thing. I’ve witnessed this. In sequence courses in STEM for example, many students will take the bad instructor if they give out more A’s and teach terribly EVEN IF the professors offered for the next portion of the sequence are already known to be infinitely more challenging in comparison (though much more skilled at teaching), and students will play the victim and basically claim that the professor should change their expectations because they did not take them the first semester (yes, they often CHOSE to take someone else who they knew or expected was easier and and only a few banked on that person either returning or another easy instructor coming along for them to continue into) and the evaluation to some extent perpetuates (I’ve seen students on RMP, for example, admit that they struggled the second semester but claim that the 1st instructor, though bad, was worth getting that 1 A on the transcript, despite the C,D, or even F in the second half so the “consumerism” also seems correlated with short-sightedness ). I believe studies were done at Duke in the 90s(?) that showed clear patterns in students rating and course selection behavior. Cornell’s attempt to put median grades for courses in a spreadsheet was also revealing in how it shifted student course selection behavior.
There is too much incentive to not want to work particularly hard or struggle for a grade in college (especially at an expensive private) when, likely due to grade inflation over time (yes most such schools are more selective, just not enough so to explain the differences in grading all of the way), some employers and professional schools now have high GPA barriers of entry. It becomes hard to justify intentionally being challenged at higher than normal levels at schools where the average courses are generally at least a tad tougher than most others (though, this does set a low bar admittedly). Too risky. May as well take the safer path of enjoying the amenities, taking standard level (or even easy) courses and instructors, making high grades, doing cool EC’s, and landing a solid job or grad./prof. school placement. It is today’s formula to success, even at many of the “best” schools. I’ve always wondered if the media’s portrayal of college (especially in American movies) plays a roll along with the prices and pressures to “succeed” (often GPA manage one’s way to success). Often even the top privates sell the same image as displayed in such movies or other college related media outlets.
please excuse my bad spelling (roll/role lol).
Comparing college to a cruise is telling.
“The rising cost of college is turning students into “customers” who expect to be treated as such, he suggests. Some of it is manifested in amenities like luxurious “leisure pools” for students.”
Well, what did we expect? So many college decisions are made during the campus visit, based on dubious criteria like food at the cafeteria, what the dorms look like, etc. No surprise that colleges strayed far from their original mission and are now have dorm dining halls with white table cloths.
When your Windows laptop gets crazy like this, you reboot it. I think most people will agree that college is ready for a reboot. Okay- who has the political will? In California, we have a Governor who is butting heads with the President of Univ of Calif. They’re both from the same political party. In a state where the Senate and Assembly are also from that same party. Same old, same old. Even the stress of the Great Recession didn’t change anything. The band played on.
A lot of illogical, self serving, etc. people making (bad) decisions that affect paying parents greatly. smh
On the issue of increasing consumerism among undergrads* of demands for greater campus amenities, I find it interesting the “paying parents” if that’s defined as full-pay parents from the upper/upper-middle classes.
Especially considering most of the demands for greater amenities such as rock climbing walls, fancy dorms, etc tended to be driven by undergrads from such full-pay families.
One illustration of this on a past CC thread was how one parent felt the Oberlin dorms were in need of renovation** which surprised this alum and when I asked several recent graduates…them too. Especially those of us including yours truly who were on near/full FA/scholarships.
When I was attending Oberlin, I thought the dorm rooms and building were fine and all classmates who overlapped during my undergrad years and recent graduates concurred. When I saw that post from a CC parent, one of my first thoughts was "What did you expect, Wardorf Astoria level amenities and room service?
- And I would add their families.
Dorm rooms that might have been fine 20 years ago when you were in college might not be fine today – because college kids are hard on facilities, things wear out over time and renovations can be necessary.
I lived in a dorm that was brand new - it had been opened just the prior year. It’s now been closed and is being renovated. Well, most anything from 1981 subject to hard living needs some kind of renovation.
Believing that something is in need of renovation isn’t the same thing as saying that one expects the Waldorf and room service. I’m not sure where that logic comes from. It’s not “entitled” to want things clean, pleasant, up to date and in good working order.
The dorms I lived in during my undergrad years were already a few…sometimes even several decades old at the least when I attended, but maintained very well over the years.
I checked with several recent alums including those who were Oberlin students during the period that CC parent posting was made. From their observations, it seems the conditions of the Oberlin dorms…including the ones I stayed were maintained to the same fine standards I experienced during my undergrad years.
Also, the age of the dorm alone doesn’t necessarily signify the dorm’s fine condition or the lack thereof. Quality of construction and quality of ongoing maintenance also matter. One good illustration of this was a friend’s dorm at a top 50 U which had a lot of serious issues(leaky plumbing, overheated rooms due to greenhouse effect from poorly thought out window design, etc) despite the fact he moved in not too long after it was built and approved for occupation by the college/town authorities.
I don’t know anything about Oberlin dorms, their upkeep or maintenance, but you’ve described how you have no problem living in messy situations and don’t take a lot of personal pride in your surroundings, so it may be that your standards aren’t as high as other people’s. I don’t know. Just a hypothesis.
Fewer kids share bedrooms than did a generation ago. Same is true with bathrooms. That has to impact how prospective students view colleges. And if you are a college that has scores of candidates applying and dying to get in, you likely don’t have an issue. As someone noted somewhere, kids will sleep on pieces of cardboard on the floor to go to certain colleges. If you are a school that has to compete for students or one what is looking to attract better performing kids (however you want to define that), you may well need to market to today’s kids.