Donaghy

Blind, conflicted mice

It is one of the recommendations in this year’s PRICOM report that in the 2007-2008 academic year the charges imposed on students be increased again, and that the non-scholarship families bear the entire burden of that increase, which means that in the coming year the non-scholarship families will pay a larger percentage of the university’s expenditures than they did last year. Illustratively, if there are 3,000 scholarship undergraduates who receive financial aid and 1,000 who do not, and the scholarship students currently pay, collectively, 50% of those university expenses that are funded by charges on students and the non-scholarship students currently pay the other 50%, next year the scholarship students will pay a smaller percentage (e.g., 48%) and the non-scholarship students will pay a higher percentage (e.g., 52%). The report does not reveal PRICOM's reasons for this mini-socialism. Is the recommendation solely an application of the “take-from-the-rich” attitudinal bias of the university’s faculty and administration, or is there an additional reason? If there is, what is it? If there is not, are the faculty and administration sure that all of the non-scholarship families are rich enough not to care—or rich at all? PRICOM is held out to be an umpire, a fair arbiter between the competing interests of financial responsibility and budgetary profligacy, but this year, once again, PRICOM turns out to be a homer for the latter. “Homer” in this instance does not refer to a four-base hit; it refers to an umpire partial to the home team, and we all know that the alumni and student families who reside off-campus are not the home team at Princeton.

Here is the truth (a useful thing; see Frankfurt, On Truth, Knopf, 2006): to pay all reasonable expenses of operating the university Princeton does not need to charge any student anything (which would eliminate distinctions between scholarship and non-scholarship students), but PRICOM, having a personal and conflicting interest in preserving even unneeded sources of funds with which to pay operating expenses, thereby allowing inclusion of unreasonably inflated expenses in the budget, wishes to disguise their self-preferring motive as a benefit for poor students. Actually, this coming year the university, acting from behind the cover provided by PRICOM, will overcharge all students, not just poor ones, as much as, or more than, they did this past year—in 2007-2008 the total charge to be imposed on non-scholarship students will be $43,980, and some lesser amount will be imposed on all other students—no one gets a base-on-balls—no one gets a reduced bill. Professor Frankfurt also has a word for that (see his previous book—recommended reading in “Hidden-ball” below (2-12-07)), and it isn't "raspberry".