Ref: “It just shows you that the rules are different when you have money.”

Yes. And given *enough* money… No rules at all.

Well, I’m no big fan of Harvard (my alma mater way back in ‘76), but, in their defense, they say they provide via scholarships pretty much whatever you “need” to attend school.

In my case, they were quite generous with scholarships, so they’re not just blowing smoke.

But, yes, it does leave many people with backbreaking loans.

Dan Lyke, what the heck are you talking about? If Philip were getting it on with supermodels on a regular basis, he wouldn’t have posted a weblog about getting 3rd world women as surrogate mothers. Frankly, it’s not a bad idea, but only an independently wealthy person even dare to suggest that. Us working stiff will (1) get stoned for making such a statement and (2) lose our jobs or at least lose all chances of a promotion.

You would think that such an idea is far-fetched, but the late founder of DHL, Larry Hillblom was known to favor Asian teenage virgins, and I’m sure that he got plenty of those. It just shows you that the rules are different when you have money.

Unfortunately, a majority of “strippers, prostitutes, etc.” around the world are those who are forced into the situation by poverty and sheer hunger, and not be the desire for an Ivy League education.

Search around a bit for the Alan Kreuger and Stacy Berg Dale study about the economic value of an ivy league education.

Universities work primarily as filtering agents; the output of a school is very heavily correlated with the input, the only place a degree really has substantive meaning is that the admissions office has done the interview for ya.

Of course, just like a diamond, the aesthetic of the degree is different. As Philip’s regular shenanigans with supermodels clearly shows.

“a man has to spend 3 months salary on a bunch of crushed charcoal in order to get married”

A lot of men figure out it’s masochism and forgo marriage altogether. Perhaps we should do the same with those expensive Ivy League toys.

Two reasons jump to my mind to explain why Harvard (or any Ivy League school) charges such high tuition, both perhaps cynical.

1) Expensive things are prestigious, flat out. Take diamonds, for example. What practical value can an enormous rock of an engagement ring have for anybody (except maybe to knock out the mugger that sees it from two blocks away and comes running)? Yet, diamonds are rare and expensive, and we’re trained by commercials and by the media to associate them the rich and famous people we admire, then poof… a man has to spend 3 months salary on a bunch of crushed charcoal in order to get married. Is the idea of prestige at universities as constructed as that? No, clearly not, but the cost reinforces it, I think.

2) The higher the sticker price for undergraduate education, the more a university can wring from the federal government in financial aid, before the school knocks the price down, anyway (or sometimes not).

Why do top universities charge such high tuition to non-rich students if they have enough money for pointless multi-million dollar construction projects? What is the point? How would policy makers defend it if you asked them directly? I can’t think of any defense for shaking down our (supposedly) best and brightest young folks. Maybe the Ivy League students aren’t really the best and brightest, but rather the richest and most tenaciously ambitious. That would explain the Bush Administration.

I wouldn’t characterize the faculty and research buildings of Harvard as “opulent”, especially as compared to the offices of most Harvard alumni I know. As a research assistant at MIT thirty years ago, while paying what (then) seemed to be outrageous tuition, I worked in a “temporary” structure built during World War II. Many of the people who worked there thought that MIT must have been bribing Cambridge city officials to keep the building from being condemned.

The great thing about America, however, is that there is so much opportunity. Where else can you fund your dream of attending one of the world’s leading universities by stripping in your spare time?

Phil, you should extend a hand to your friend. With your money, you can afford to hire her as, ahem, a personal assistant.