<p>"I've been wide-eyed on some of my visits, struck by the extent to which being a student today resembles living at Versailles, where Louis XIV's every whim was so thoroughly accommodated that there was even a Superintendent of the King's Furniture. One college tour guide proudly informed us that upon arrival every freshman is issued a brand-new laptop. Even if the students already have one? Why, yes, the guide replied.</p>
<p>Then there's the food. I can't say we were deprived when I was an undergraduate 35 years ago. (For a time steak was served every Saturday night.) But compared with today's students we were like inmates of a gulag, having to survive on a single daily bowl of gruel. Nowadays, every taste and eating disorder is catered to -- Japanese, Mexican, vegan -- and, in many cases, 24/7.</p>
<p>Indeed "24/7" could be the motto of undergraduate life. Facilities like libraries and gyms are open around the clock. Computer services are available at all hours, too. One college we visited must keep its tech support team doped up on amphetamines. Accidentally dump a cup of coffee into your laptop? No problem! They'll have it back to you in full working order in a day -- something no private-sector IT department could afford to offer.</p>
<p>On every tour we took, guides proudly boasted about the wide selection of clubs at their respective institutions -- a number that almost everywhere runs into the hundreds. And they reassured us that if, after surveying these abundant offerings, a student finds some lack, he can start his own organization and the college will subsidize it -- no questions asked.</p>
<p>It is really hard to send a donation to a college when they are spending like drunken sailors on expansion plans that you don't personally agree with. But yes, I've had the experience.</p>
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Required reading for all private college boards.
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<p>Not just private schools. Our public flagship has a rec center second to none (really, it is amazing, and is the main feature of prospective student tours), and the days of cafeteria slop on a tray are very long gone.</p>
<p>Having gone to college in an austerity era, I have to say that I did not begrudge the students all of the nice frills. In fact, I am a little sad that my D will go to college in another era that most likely will prove to be another austerity era. </p>
<p>This reminds me of a story my Dad used to tell me in the seventies, when things were bad for us. He said he made more total money, but in 1960 he lived so much better on a lot less.</p>
<p>anothermom, I don't think that the climbing walls, granite counter tops, and food to order stations will disappear. Hopefully, the spending on new construction will dramatically slow, but maintenance will be kept up.</p>
<p>The parents who are bemoaning the colleges' largesse may also be the same one who resent having the darlings share a room, complain about the food (and having to top up their darlings' allowances in order for the latter to eat out), and so on and so forth.
At many private universities, the wonderful gyms have been paid for by donors, not through tuition income. I read recently that at Harvard, tuition income accounts only for about 19% of its expenditures.</p>
<p>Marite, that's absolutely true. However, think about it. If the school's endowments are hit, so are their donors' endowments. Usually a donor sets up a trust to fund projects and that trust is based on investments. Everyone gets hit hard when the market crashes.</p>
<p>Indeed, everyone gets hit. I just want to remind us all that helicopter parents don't just hound profs about their children's grades are the children themselves about why they don't call home more often. They also demand a level of luxury for them that was totally unknown in my days when there was one payphone per dorm floor. It's the parents or students who pay for the cell phone bills, but it's the colleges that pay for wi-fi and other kinds of access.
All the luxuries that parents see on campuses did not spring up just because colleges wanted them--they were in response to demand.</p>
<p>Money is fungible. for every dollar "donorS" spend on gyms, that is a dollar not available for financial aid. </p>
<p>Of course, Gibson's WSJ article is so typical of that author - a good job of mixing up marketing hype with reality. </p>
<p>IT support at a university 24/7? Your cable company offers the same thing. </p>
<p>Food service around the clock? Did he taste the stuff?</p>
<p>Sushi every day? Did he bother to do the math and realize that his kid would be out of "food dollars" half way through the term if he ate like that?</p>
<p>U Presidents salaries grew faster than inflation? Shocking! Has he compared that to Wall Street (as in "Wall Street Journal", perhaps?) executive salaries? Or Fortune 500 companies (of which some universities have higher budgets!)</p>
<p>Frankly this article is irresponsible. He's a well paid WSJ staffer that can afford to send his kid to the best universities in the land. What about those kids who can't afford such luxury? (keeping in mind that the only reason such "luxury" exists is because we parents demanded it!) and end up at a local state or community college? Dorms? yea, right...Gym? go buy a membership...</p>
<p>Oh my gosh, I forgot about running down the hall for a phone call! I agree with alot said here. I'm not too much about all of this (I had kids who shared bedrooms) and I was downright surprised at the college campus amentities when I started looking with S1 a couple years ago, but I know sons and daughters of friends who "demanded" that their parents pay for singles because "they simply couldn't share a room" so yes, alot of the societal ills lay directly on the feet of "us parents."</p>
<p>to give you an idea (for those of you who don't want to take the time to read the article) of how off base the author is, take a look at this quote: {/quote]There's nothing to put a brake on their fiscal expansiveness. Colleges have something close to a monopoly; they can charge what they like because they have a captive audience.
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<p>If higher ed is "close to a monopoly...with a captive audience", when you have thousands of colleges in the US alone, not to mention Canada and Britain (yes, some Scottish Universities among others are now recruiting in the US!) competing for the same limited number of students, then what is not close to a monopoly.</p>
<p>Please folks, let us not get hung up on the words of an author who is either clueless to realities, or blind to them in his efforts to sell a newspaper.</p>
<p>Colleges are investing in what consumers are looking for. Just look through this forum and see what people base their decisions on while choosing the colleges. "School spirit" (i.e. big sports), "dorms", "food", etc. are often at the top of the list...
It always annoys me to see prospective students concerned about quality of food at Swarthmore (which is just fine, btw), or quality of entertainment at Stanford (claming that there's "nothing to do on campus" - please!..)...
The universities are not the ones to blame - they are catering to their consumers.</p>
<p>I agree with NMD. As so often is the case in shoddy journalism, the writer substitutes gee-whiz examples for a wider perspective. I work at No Name, Struggling Private College, probably much more representative of the average college (not the ones that get singled out to make a point in articles like this.) No climbing walls, no sushi, no pools, no "dorms like palaces." Everything here is barebones. I'm guessing we are closer to the norm--but that doesn't sell papers.</p>
<p>my son's dorm room last year at BIG private U was an old hotel (1920's) converted into a dorm. 3 boys in a bedroom the size of many walk in closets. I paid nearly 9K for him to sleep in that luxury!</p>
<p>They do have a nice gym and world class library :-)</p>
<p>I never shared a room before I went to college, nor had S1 and S2. I thought it was a sort of right of passage. There were no private rooms at my undergrad institution, and I had a different roommate each year. Food was adequate with steak and shrimp on Sat. nights and no service on Sunday evening. The sorority/fraternity kids had it even worse because they all had communal sleeping rooms with 9-10 to a room. </p>
<p>S1 lived at home until grad school and even then (4 kids to a suite), each one had a private bedroom that would lock. S2 has a roommate and a typical dorm room this year. Food service is not exceptional and doesn't always coincide with his schedule. </p>
<p>Internet connections would seem to be an absolute necessity nowadays, but 24-hr. everything and sports facilities comparable to what the best school athletes have seem to be a bit much. I agree that schools are generally responding to demand, but from my observation (currently a 3rd-tier state university) very few students out of the whole student body avail themselves of the wonders provided. So I think there is also a huge disconnect in responding to "demand" from prospective/new students and their parents and the extent to which what is demanded is actually used by more than a few.</p>