[FRIAM] Friam Today

[Nick Thompson]

Hi, Frank,

 

Yes.  That’s an exciting bit of news.  I have no “inside information” about what is going on, but inferring from my experience at Clark University, St. Johns taking on the almost universal practice of stating notional “sticker prices” which only the wealthiest students pay and which help to pay the tuitions of their less fortunate colleagues.   I am ambivalent about it, myself, since the practice Incorporates the fact that for rich people to get any education worth its salt, there HAVE to be poor people around them.  Nothing poisons the mind so thoroughly as living amongst unseemly wealth.  Talk about “entitlement”.  Yuck!  

 

On the other hand, for institutions of higher education, devoted after all to the pursuit of truth, to base their tuition structure on a lie, is also icky, so I applaud the experiment.  St. Johns apparently feels that this policy will get them an even more balanced student body than the practice of overstating tuition costs to include scholarship costs.  Making tuition costs more honest will go a long way to challenging the exaggeration of higher education inflation, which comes largely from accommodating rich students in the style to which they are accustomed so that enough of them will apply to pay for the poorer ones.  (Apparently, the Umass dining hall is now serving sushi!)

 

Frank Bruni wrote <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/opinion/contrarian-college-stjohns.html>  about the change in the NYT.  In less than 24 hours, 1200 comments accumulated, a few mindless, but many interested.  They are still available at the link above, or I scraped the site and put them in a word file, above. 

 

See you in three weeks, 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2018 1:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: [FRIAM] Friam Today

 

There were only four of us at Friam today.  Three of us got there early and the fourth walked.  Also the coffee shop was full of students. This was apparently all because of a presentation by the College administration about St. John's new tuition policy in which the tuition is being reduced by tens of thousands of dollars per year.  The parking lot was virtually full by the time I got there at about 8:45.  I assume it was lack of parking that caused such low attendance.  I hope to see you New Mexico Friam members next week.

 

Frank


-- 

Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

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