Just back from a trip to New York City. Richard and I flew back from Teterboro airport in his fire-breathing turbocharged Mooney. It was JFK, Jr.-style haze all the way to Boston and a fair amount of time inside actual clouds. I’m studying to become a flight instructor so I did 30 minutes of instrument flying from the right seat, craning my neck to see the instruments that are placed in front of the left seat. As we drove back to my apartment it was nice to see how much progress Harvard is making on a $100 million construction project two blocks from where I live. They tore down two 30-40-year-old faculty and research office buildings and are rebuilding them exactly the same size but more opulent.
After I’d carted my purchases from New York’s Strand Bookstore upstairs I turned on my PC, still wondering how an organization could grow so rich that they could afford to tear down buildings every 30 years. Waiting in my inbox was the following email:
“As many of you know, I’ve been entertaining the thought of moonlighting this summer as a stripper to earn more money to pay for school in the fall…”
Our friend will be writing Harvard a check for almost $33,000 in September (tuition plus “health fees”).
That’s probably the least objectionable source of Harvard funds. Like Brown, Yale and other Ivy league universities, their endowment was in part funded by proceeds from the slave trade:
http://www.providencephoenix.com/features/top/multi/documents/03790756.asp
Of course, nowadays, the main source is investment income (including real estate) on the endowment.
Make certain that your friend follows through on their commitment to apply the money to their tuition. It is way to easy to ride along on the bounty of youth and forget about ‘real stuff’ until its ten years later and your back feels like crap everytime you do a back bend.
If they do continue to pursue this career (money is great, working conditions don’t suck if you are in a non-smoking env) then help them set up some sort of investment situation.
this is a common phenom. I know of at least three women who have put themselves through ivy league, med school and law whilst dancing scantily clad around a pole :-). Apparently, its a great character building exercise….
sorry to trail off here, but as a new jersey resident, i’m suprised to hear that you flew out of teteboro airport. i get scared just driving by that oversized parking lot. godspeed to you, sir.
Phillip, just be glad you don’t have to be a part-time stripper to afford to fly…
(Had to find some way to tie in that last thread)
Actually- I think that WE should be glad that Phil can afford to fly without being a stripper.
When I attended Caltech (a year ago), tuition was only 5% of the annual income. I don’t think it’s a major source of revenue for Harvard, either, considering the grants and endowment contributions it receives. In fact, Harvard (and Caltech and MIT) are among the few universities with enough grants and rich alumni to be able to afford to drop tuition all together (as I’m sure Phillip knows). Given these facts, it is even more damning that these schools continue to raise prices and force their students to take out loans, apply for school-year jobs, etc than it would be if tuition was really important to them financially.
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Phil, you should extend a hand to your friend. With your money, you can afford to hire her as, ahem, a personal assistant. 🙂
I wouldn’t characterize the faculty and research buildings of Harvard as “opulent”, especially as compared to the offices of most Harvard alumni I know. As a research assistant at MIT thirty years ago, while paying what (then) seemed to be outrageous tuition, I worked in a “temporary” structure built during World War II. Many of the people who worked there thought that MIT must have been bribing Cambridge city officials to keep the building from being condemned.
The great thing about America, however, is that there is so much opportunity. Where else can you fund your dream of attending one of the world’s leading universities by stripping in your spare time?
Why do top universities charge such high tuition to non-rich students if they have enough money for pointless multi-million dollar construction projects? What is the point? How would policy makers defend it if you asked them directly? I can’t think of any defense for shaking down our (supposedly) best and brightest young folks. Maybe the Ivy League students aren’t really the best and brightest, but rather the richest and most tenaciously ambitious. That would explain the Bush Administration.
Two reasons jump to my mind to explain why Harvard (or any Ivy League school) charges such high tuition, both perhaps cynical.
1) Expensive things are prestigious, flat out. Take diamonds, for example. What practical value can an enormous rock of an engagement ring have for anybody (except maybe to knock out the mugger that sees it from two blocks away and comes running)? Yet, diamonds are rare and expensive, and we’re trained by commercials and by the media to associate them the rich and famous people we admire, then poof… a man has to spend 3 months salary on a bunch of crushed charcoal in order to get married. Is the idea of prestige at universities as constructed as that? No, clearly not, but the cost reinforces it, I think.
2) The higher the sticker price for undergraduate education, the more a university can wring from the federal government in financial aid, before the school knocks the price down, anyway (or sometimes not).
“a man has to spend 3 months salary on a bunch of crushed charcoal in order to get married”
A lot of men figure out it’s masochism and forgo marriage altogether. Perhaps we should do the same with those expensive Ivy League toys.
Search around a bit for the Alan Kreuger and Stacy Berg Dale study about the economic value of an ivy league education.
Universities work primarily as filtering agents; the output of a school is very heavily correlated with the input, the only place a degree really has substantive meaning is that the admissions office has done the interview for ya.
Of course, just like a diamond, the aesthetic of the degree is different. As Philip’s regular shenanigans with supermodels clearly shows.
Unfortunately, a majority of “strippers, prostitutes, etc.” around the world are those who are forced into the situation by poverty and sheer hunger, and not be the desire for an Ivy League education.
Dan Lyke, what the heck are you talking about? If Philip were getting it on with supermodels on a regular basis, he wouldn’t have posted a weblog about getting 3rd world women as surrogate mothers. Frankly, it’s not a bad idea, but only an independently wealthy person even dare to suggest that. Us working stiff will (1) get stoned for making such a statement and (2) lose our jobs or at least lose all chances of a promotion.
You would think that such an idea is far-fetched, but the late founder of DHL, Larry Hillblom was known to favor Asian teenage virgins, and I’m sure that he got plenty of those. It just shows you that the rules are different when you have money.
Well, I’m no big fan of Harvard (my alma mater way back in ’76), but, in their defense, they say they provide via scholarships pretty much whatever you “need” to attend school.
In my case, they were quite generous with scholarships, so they’re not just blowing smoke.
But, yes, it does leave many people with backbreaking loans.
Ref: “It just shows you that the rules are different when you have money.”
Yes. And given *enough* money… No rules at all.