Yank 'em

We’re being humiliated

I almost threw up my sunflower seeds reading the N.Y. Times Education Life section yesterday. First they show that our endowment per student is so much larger than everyone else’s that it looks like a misprint; then they show, with a colored bar chart, that 11 schools have waived tuition or family contribution to tuition (at various income levels), while Princeton is shown to have done neither, and then they show color pictures of Princeton’s gardens (maintained by a million-dollar endowment account), its palatial libraries, and a poet, “endowed-chair” professor who looks like his toe is stuck in a light socket. This public flogging is humiliating. If our current trustees and administration can’t see this, haven’t been able to see it coming, despite repeated warnings, over 14 years, can’t see that it’s rapidly getting worse, and can’t just eliminate tuition to put an end to it, then yank ‘em.