Going back to my old school

CNN recently published a list of the 10 Most Expensive Undergraduate Colleges in the US. When I got to the very end of it, I was absolutely startled that my old school, Vassar, had tied for tenth position. I didn't know whether to be proud or concerned. Tuition for my freshman year there was $8200, a princely sum for the early '80s. And now for '09-'10 it's almost sixfold.

I went to Vassar because it was my safety school. I cursed that I didn't get into Princeton. But ultimately I was relieved that I would not be one of Brooke Shields' classmates and I learned to embrace Vassar wholeheartedly.

While at Vassar, I encountered a great many people like myself. There were a lot of Ivy League rejects there. And we were rejects not because we didn't have the ability to handle the academic requirements of an Ivy, but because we simply had not applied ourselves during our high school years.

We were misfits, freaks, malcontents and assorted other iconoclasts who heard the beat of a different drummer-- somehow the Admissions Office could pick us out from the applicant pool. When we passed through Taylor Gate, we were amazed that Vassar simply didn't encourage us to follow to follow this beat if we heard it; she REQUIRED us to. She articulated something that we had perhaps already discovered, that the life of a troublemaker was not an easy path, but she codified in us that it was the only path worth following and it was our duty to pursue it.

These days I now hear opinions like this-- articles that decry the managerial elite that our nation's finest schools are now producing, their students' lack of intellectual curiosity and hard questions, their desire to march lockstep with the group, to not rock the boat and to get along for material gain. When I read this essay, I was both ashamed that it specifically trashes our traditional brother school, Yale, and I was also quite proud because it describes exactly what Vassar is NOT.

I suppose that there are many other reasons that Vassar is among the costliest of things. We don't have the massive endowment of Harvard and Stanford and yet our portfolio has been hit just like everyone else's. Less than 10% of our operating budget comes from corporate donations and 60% of students receive some sort of financial aid. At least, those were the last figures that I saw.

However, in the final analysis, I have to say that I am very proud of my old school and want to tell any prospective student that her future value to you is beyond any estimation and her current price is worth every damn penny.