Education: Good Value for the Cost?

In these harsh economic times when practically everyone has to ‘trim the fat’, so to

speak, from their expenditures it pays to evaluate everything closely. Perhaps the harshest cost

facing people is a decent education beyond high school. It is my belief that for the amount of

money invested in a college education, the actual education gained is far below an acceptable

threshold. “It's more than 500% more expensive to enroll in college now than it was in

1985…the rising cost of college tuition far outpaced the growth of medical costs (286%) and

overall inflation (121%) during the same span (Notte).” Another article I read detailed one

person’s costs to attend college in 1977 when “At one of New York's state universities, I

managed to pay for years three and four with a $500 scholarship, a summer job, and by

becoming a resident assistant in year four, plus a $500 federally guaranteed student loan. I

finished in 1982 with $3,000 in debt, equivalent to $7,026 in 2012 dollars (Daughter Number

Three).”

My adopted younger sister lives in Maine and attended the University of Southern Maine,

part of a state university system. Her cost of attendance as an in-state student was $20,086 per

year of enrollment, for out-of-state students that rocketed up to as much as $32,446 a year,

dependent on several factors. That’s three or four times the amount paid by the blogger in 1977,

even accounting for inflation. For an Ivy league school like Yale, “The total Cost of Attendance

for attending Yale in 2012-2013 is $58,600, which includes tuition ($42,300), room ($7,150),

board ($5,850), and books and personal expenses ($3,300) (admissions.yale.edu).” That is three

times the cost of my sister’s school, and over eight times as expensive as the New York State

University the blogger attended in 1977. Now for such a high cost, one would expect to find

amazing educational results that far outweigh anything you could obtain at a community college

level.

Yet in his article "The disadvantages of an elite education", William Deresiewicz decries

the education he received, citing several very valid and noteworthy issues he realized came with

the already hefty Ivy League price tag. From his own words we know William attended college

for “Fourteen years of higher education…” and obtained “a handful of Ivy League degrees.

(Pg.427).” So imagine at today’s cost for Yale of $58,600 for fourteen years, and you arrive at a

hefty price tag of $820,400.00 for Deresiewicz. The biggest issue for Deresiewicz is that he

found himself unable to simply communicate with someone who, thanks to his Yale education,

was so different to him “So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so

mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small

talk...(Pg.427).” Of his Ivy League experience he stated, “Because these schools tend to cultivate

liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on

behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it.

(Pg.428).” “It makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. Elite schools pride

themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race.

With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous

(Deresiewicz, Pg.428).”

“However much elite universities like to sprinkle their incoming classes with a few actors

or violinists, they select for and develop one form of intelligence: the analytic. While this is

broadly true of all universities, elite schools, precisely because their students (and faculty, and

administrators) possess this one form of intelligence to such a high degree, are more apt to ignore

the value of others.” (Pg.428). Yet “…the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own

inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly

encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for

them (Deresiewicz, Pg.427).” Another source states “The Ivy League system is not simply a

series of academic institutions or even a genuine test of academic ability. Rather, the Ivy League

system is a heavily class-based sorting system. This is true even within races, where both white

and non-white Ivy League students tend towards the upper economic echelons of their specific

races. Class discrimination exists as well as legacy admissions which by definition are heavily

class stratified (Mahin).” If you look at parallels within the natural world one rule seems

prevalent; to quote Charles Darwin, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the

most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” I personally

believe this applies to more than just nature. Ivy League schools praise the most academically

intelligent or the students with the strongest legacy, or family, ties to the school. What will

happen if enough legacy students break the chain or human intellect on a whole drops? Or if

enough students choose to attend other schools and enough change happens that their refusal to

adapt will lead to an uncertain future?

Deresiewicz is not alone in thinking that the selling point of an Ivy League college is

‘what it can do for you’. According to Tao Tao Holmes,“There are many who will speak to the

benefits of prestige and pedigree gained from an Ivy League education. In a 2011 Forbes article,

Jonathan Robe called this upward tuition trend the “prestige effect,” or “race for prestige.” But

the price of prestige costs students more than money. It prevents us from taking risks when we

leave. In a column for the News six years ago (“Nation can’t afford higher tuition,” Jan. 18,

2007), two baby boomers, Neil Howe GRD ’84 and William Strauss, wrote that regardless of

family circumstances, low college fees in the ’60s and ’70s allowed them and their classmates to

“follow the calling of our choice or the vocation of our conscience.” Now, to justify the cost of

college to both self and parent or pay off debt, students “have no choice but to rivet their

ambitions, their careers and their very lives to the pursuit of the highest money return

(Holmes).”

Argument two, “An elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth

(Deresiewicz’s, Pg.429)”. A blogger who supports Deresiewicz’s article states, “The Ivy League

colleges and their peers are factories that take in “successful” students and churn out

“successful” students that are wired to have “successful” careers and lead “successful” lives. In

the case of top tier institutions, success can generally be equated with wealth, which has been the

American definition of success, and much of the rest of the world has adopted this definition

(Evren).” It is not hard to agree with these statements when I look at my friends and family who

might not have gone to Ivy League schools but who don’t consider themselves at a disadvantage

in their chosen fields. My brother, who is a contractor, is his own boss and makes his own hours

is happy in what he does. My mom, who is retired now, worked in banking most of her life and

she was happy doing what she did even though she doesn’t have an Ivy League Education.

Evren’s blog also quotes from Deresiewicz’s article and goes on to present their own

personal view, “Even for students who crave an academic education, the rigidity of many

institutions can prevent them from achieving a satisfying education.” I find myself agreeing with

this person; it is my belief that even for a student seeking purely academic learning, there still

needs to be flexibility to the programs. For my younger sister, who has learning disabilities,

technology has helped her bridge the gap between herself and her classmates. Yet there are still

many professors who will not allow technological learning aids in class. Most of these professors

have had to deal with students abusing the ability by using texting, tweeting, and other forms of

social media mid-lecture; these students are ruining things for truly disabled students who just

can’t compete in class if the best way they know how to learn is taken away. Yet in this

increasingly technological world, those students like my sister who have learned how to use

technology to cope with and compensate for their disabilities may end up being the most

adaptable after college.

The statement from Deresiewicz’s article that struck me the most was, “I’ve been struck,

during my time at Yale, by how similar everyone looks. You hardly see any hippies or punks or

art-school types, and at a college that was known in the ’80s as the Gay Ivy, few out lesbians and

no gender queers. The geeks don’t look all that geeky; the fashionable kids go in for understated

elegance. Thirty-two flavors, all of them vanilla (Deresiewicz, Pg.434).” My younger sister is a

young lesbian art student and her favorite thing about her art school is the open acceptance and

well-promoted LGBTQ club. Her school celebrates each student’s difference. And once

graduation occurs, those differences will help future employers pick the right person with the

right attitude for the job. How can they pick the best future employee from an army of clones

who have been taught not to break away, to be original, or to be creative? In my sister’s opinion,

and I am inclined to agree, that an education that would teach future leaders not just how to lead

others but how to work alongside with them, communicating with them despite class levels, and

who can appreciate originality and creativity is going to be an invaluable asset, worth the cost of

a community college or state-funded university level of education. The prestige of Ivy League,

in my belief, cannot compensate for the class separation and elitist attitude, especially not at

three or more times the cost.

On the other hand though, after further research, I did find some evidence talking about

the amazing financial aid at some schools like Harvard. “According to the Bay Area News

Group, a "family of four -- married parents, a high-school senior and a 14-year-old child –

making $130,000 a year," with typical financial aid, would pay around $17,000 for tuition, room

and board and other expenses if their child went to Harvard. However, if their child attended a

Cal State, they would pay $24,000 (Kingkade).” However, every school is different and the right

financial plan at a state university could even the playing ground. It is my belief after reading

Deresiewicz, that if a school would sacrifice originality and creative intelligence for legacy

admissions and straight academics, the education will never be worth the attendance cost. For a

school that celebrates its students individuality, no matter the cost, the resulting confident,

original, and well-rounded student will always be priceless.

WORKS CITED

"Costs and Financial Aid." University of Southern Maine. Usm.maine.edu, n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2013. .

Daughter Number Three. "Daughter Number Three: College Costs, Then and Now."Daughter Number Three: College Costs, Then and Now. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2013. .

Deresiewicz, William. "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education." The American Scholar:. Theamericanscholar.org, 2008. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. .

Evren. "The (Further) Disadvantages of an Elite Education." Serendip Studio. Serendip, 1994. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. .

Holmes, Tao Tao. "The Price Tag of Prestige." Yale Daily News. Yale Daily News, 13 Sept. 2013. Web. 01 Oct. 2013. .

Kingkade, Tyler. "Harvard And Yale Now Less Costly Than Public California Universities." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 05 Mar. 2012. Web. 02 Oct. 2013. .

Mahin, Jay. "Class Action." Class Action. N.p., 9 Apr. 2013. Web. 01 Oct. 2013. .

Notte, Jason. "College Tuition Has Jumped by 500% since 1985." MSNMoney. Msn.com, 27 Aug. 2013. Web. 01 Oct. 2013. .

"Yale." What Is the Current Tuition at ? N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2013. .