Cleveland Spiders

1899: The Losingest Season

 

The other day Princeton announced another tuition increase. This time $1,500, making total tuition $40,170, which, when combined with mandatory room charges (also increased, to $7,220) and mandatory board charges (also increased, to $5,860), makes the total base cost of a year at Princeton $53,250—in after-tax dollars.[fn1] For this, in a year when the geniuses in the Social Security Administration determined that the cost of living had increased by only 1.7%, not 3.9%, Princeton stands on the top step of the dugout and raises its hat expecting grateful applause from students, parents, and alums, particularly those ensconced in Washington acupoints. 

Certainly another losing season, maybe my losingest. I say that because this season we happen to be in the midst of a painful, dispiriting macroeconomic mess of which only the icy tips are seen by the intelligensia, e.g., PRINCO and its secret cabal of managers.

But in this endeavor I have only losing seasons—17 consecutive, every season since 1995. That is the year when I first realized that Princeton does not need to charge tuition. [fn2] Tuition was $25,810.

So let us begin again, in the spring, when everything begins again [fn3], and let us begin with a reminder of what Princeton has become—a left-wing think tank that provides a coming-of-age experience to just enough under-privileged U.S. children to score both tax exemption and taxpayer subsidization. While that may read as if some negativity were intended, I actually intend it to be more in the nature of a pejorative incendiary—a little cherry bomb of truth. [fn4] Look at yourself for chrissake. 

 

[fn1]—Princeton charges tuition to 40% of its undergraduates. About the families of this 40% Princeton makes the same assumption that the voting public makes about all Americans who complete Schedule D on their tax returns—namely, that there is no limit to what they can afford.

[fn2]—Do not get me wrong. I have no problem with charges not based on need. I follow the teachings of Karl Market. I am a confessed Marketist. But you may not have it both ways. If you wish to charge what the market will bear, say so. Say that you are in it for the money. No shame in that. But if you don’t want to pay tax on your income, if you want to beg for donations as a doer of good, if you are nauseated by profit-making, then retire from the marketplace and prove your need. You have $17,404,000,000—that’s 17 billion four hundred million dollars—in the bank. Well, not quite “in the bank.” More like “in private equity investments.” You remember those. They’re things like Bain Capital—killers of American jobs and spouses in need of medical care.

[fn3]—Bart, of course.

[fn4]—“All you have to do is look at me to know that every word is true.” All-the-way Mae Mordabito.