<p>To those who think students sporting designer clothes, indulging in expensive dining, living in high cost apartments, etc. in D.C. is in poor taste…</p>
<p>Here’s a question – Americans have around 80% more wealth than our neighbors across the world. In fact, </p>
<p>In order to be a conscientious global citizen and not risk hurting others’ feelings, should we therefore Americans forgo our homes in favor of more modest shacks? Should we abandon our wardrobe in favor of a few items? Should we eat one meal a day rather than three so as not to offend others? Should we relinquish our cars? Obviously this is preposterous, and yet I personally don’t see a difference between this proposal and what others have suggested. (What I’m picking up is that many feel the rich kids should tone it down so as not to affront the others.) I might also add, that endowments alone do not fund financial aid; much of what’s given to some has been taken from others. I find it ironic that some of the full pays who supplement the tuition/expenses of others are the ones being criticized.</p>
<p>We all have things where we indulge and things where we don’t. For example, a lot of people who might recoil in horror at spending money on, say, a nice handbag or pair of shoes have record / CD / digital collections of music that number in the thousands. What’s the difference, really?</p>
<p>I don’t think this is true as a general proposition about private colleges and universities. It may be true of a certain narrow band of “elite” private colleges and universities that traditionally saw it as their mission to educate the sons and daughters (well, sons, for many years) of the WASP elite and only more recently have added diversity goals–though as has been pointed out, socioeconomic diversity is one area where for the most part they remain pretty weak.</p>
<p>But there are dozens of private urban Catholic colleges and universities that have always understood it as part of their mission to educate the sons and daughters of the urban poor and working class, along with those of greater means. And there are some private colleges explicitly dedicated to educating the poor–like Berea College in Kentucky, which charges no tuition and admits only “academically promising students, primarily from Appalachia, who have limited economic resources.” Or Tougaloo College in Mississippi, a historically black liberal arts college founded by New York-based Christian missionaries in 1869, expressly for the purpose of educating former slaves and the sons and daughters of former slaves. Or for that matter, any number of other private HBUCs, many of which have 70%, 80%, or 90% of their students on federal Pell grants.</p>
<p>We get a very distorted view of the landscape of American higher education when we obsess about a couple dozen of the most selective private colleges and universities in the country, as many on CC do, and assume that what we observe about that exclusive and unrepresentative group must also be true for private colleges and universities more generally. "Tain’t so.</p>
<p>“In order to be a conscientious global citizen and not risk hurting others’ feelings, should we therefore Americans forgo our homes in favor of more modest shacks? Should we abandon our wardrobe in favor of a few items? Should we eat one meal a day rather than three so as not to offend others? Should we relinquish our cars?”</p>
<p>Not only not preposterous; I think it would be great if we strove that way, though it wouldn’t have anything to do with feelings or offense. Or simply recognized that our responsibility grows with our entitlement. </p>
<p>And if you’d like to come to my house and take some stuff, the door is literally wide open. (Well, probably not YOU, but you get my druthers.)</p>
<p>I actually think you could rewrite your post in the opposite way and have it be more true, BClintock. There are far fewer private schools with that mission than the opposite, not that this is “right,” it is simply so.</p>
<p>Do we covet what others have? Why else would someone else’s flamboyance with money bother anyone?</p>
<p>Maybe we believe that material possessions makes one superior thus causing others to feel inferior.</p>
<p>Should colleges cater to the wealthy? What college doesn’t? Should colleges cater to the middle and lower income brackets? What are those brackets? Who is rich and who is poor?</p>
<p>I grew up poor. Now I’m upper middle class. I have to pay a huge amount for my kids to go to college. I feel like my kids are just a generation away from falling back into poverty. I realize the fluidity of the classes in America. We really are a classless society even though the Hilton’s, Trumps, Buffets may appear to own eternal economic empires and the Clinton’s and Bushes and Kennedy’s have ruling class dynasties.</p>
<p>The truth is it could all vanish quickly for them and us. I teach my kids to keep moving forward. To try to raise our entire family as high up out of poverty as we can and that it is a multigenerational struggle in which we are engaged. I could be poor in a minute. A phone call telling me my job is lost or an illness or disability. What is the point of talking about the classes when class is so fluid in America unlike in the rest of the world that are born and die into one class over a lifetime?</p>
<p>Has anyone else read “The Price of Admission” by Daniel Golden? In it he describes the strategy pursued by Duke University which was not a particulary “elite” school back in the early 1980s and admissions were not very competitive. The administration at the time decided to heavily cultivate the not terribly academic offspring of wealthy would-be donors and began to grow their endowment from $135 million in 1980 to $3.8 billion by 2006. Perhaps GW is pursuing a similar strategy?</p>
<p>Well, I’m not a person who is offended at displays of wealth, so these are not my personal views. It’s just a guess at what worldview would make one offended at such displays of wealth.</p>
<p>For the crass narrow-minded mercenary values the poster promotes which goes against the very values they hold and they raised their children to hold regarding education…especially college education. </p>
<p>Keep in mind they have nothing against capitalism or business. They just feel the values in that poster go too far and are abhorrent to their sensibilities and personal values in areas of wealth and education.</p>
<p>It seems all of the “judgment” that Oberlin students (allegedly) continuously make towards others on their basis of their dress or what they display or what they have, and all the alleged “sneering” at any accoutrements of the middle or upper middle class, is pretty crass as well. If it’s true, that is.</p>
<p>How is such different from the common sentiment on these forums that “college is not job training”, despite today’s economic reality that few would go to college if it did not upgrade one’s job prospects?</p>
<p>That’s fair, UCB. I certainly don’t see college as job training, but I have probably said that in worse ways than I could have.</p>
<p>I do understand, these days, that for many it is job training, and it’s not for me to decide if that is 'right or wrong," or valuable. College costs too much to always just be about broadening out the mind.</p>
<p>College is not job training (solely) for me and mine. If other people wish to view it as job training, isn’t that their prerogative, and what does my opinion matter?</p>
<p>For students whose families have limited means (and limited means can be defined broadly) it’s absolutely critical for them to prioritize their post-college employment prospects. To characterize that as “crass narrow-minded and mercenary” is the epitome of elitism. If other families are ok with supporting these students post-graduation or funding another $100k or so of graduate school, that’s their perogitive but for anyone to sneer at students who do regard college as job preparation is really offensive.</p>
<p>Indeed, about two thirds of bachelor’s degrees granted in the US are in obviously pre-professional majors (though the actual job prospects of such majors varies widely), and some liberal arts majors are frequently chosen for pre-professional reasons.</p>