Does College Have To Cost A Lot?

I finally got around to reading this Gladwell article about the problems inherent in the US News and other ranking systems, ranking colleges that is. The whole thing is worth a read, but what stands out for me is the extent to which US News fails to serious take value per dollar into account—that is, they don't rank affordability as worth very much in their algorithms, so the very expensive schools tend to rank higher, assuming the extra tuition money buys something (like smaller class size) than much cheaper schools that may only be a little bit worse.

As the product of extremely expensive schools, I have long wondered what all that money bought me (I try not to wonder what it bought my parents, who actually spent the money). Gladwell actually has an answer: nice buildings. And nice flower beds. It isn't quite that simple, of course, but to a great extent what Yale tuition buys, tangibly and visibly, is the experience of going to school in gorgeous buildings. The degree is worth a great deal, but the point is that the same teachers could do the same teaching to the same number of students much more cheaply—all they need are some rented classrooms and some blackboards (we all realize PowerPoint is bad for teaching anyway). And, in fact, ugly classrooms and blackboards are pretty much what a lot of state schools offer, in terms of educational real estate, and that is one reason they are cheaper. That, in itself, does not make the education worse.

Before I offer my radical notion, let me say that because our educational caste system is reified, and unlikely to change, and self-perpetuating, the tuition dollars you spend at Yale or Stanford do offer something you can't get from Penn State at any cost: prestige, alumni networks, and most important a cohort of peers who are, on average, very academically capable. That last part—the peer group—is why I would not have traded my Yale College experience for a large state-school experience. (Yes, I know you can find very, very bright and stimulating peers at many schools, especially large ones, but density counts for a lot.)

But it is important to realize how much money those big schools are spending on aesthetics.

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