When Ohio State spends 140 million on a athletic center so your son can climb a mountain indoors, when BU can issue a press release about adding a wave machine to their million-dollar Olympic pool, or when the Univ of Wisconsin at Madison can announce that they have a massage parlor on campus to relieve stress (I can't make up this stuff!), what kind of an investment is a parent making? An investment in stuff? In creature comforts? All the things that have nothing to do with academic rigor and excellence? All the stuff that will pamper and distract our kids in ways you might find counterproductive to preparing for the world after college?
Marketing to your kids by using such press releases says only one thing about the colleges: to get your student to their campus, they must appeal to their instincts. What happend to appealing to their minds?
By contrast, as if not to engage in such superficial behavior, new freshman students at Brown were greeted with these words from the president: "You are the smartest, the cutest, the savviest, extraordinary -- I could go on and on." The seeds were already planted by the school's president that students were going to enjoy a spoiling self-centeredness in an atmosphere of entitlement.
The arrogance of both these approaches from our colleges and universities - pandering to a child's instincts or fostering a sense of entitlement on super talented students - is what we're all forced to pay for.
Message to the parents: your student is going to do well if s/he has a work ethic, proof of his or her own achievement, and a desire to succeed. With over 4,000 colleges in America (read: choices!) you deserve the right to think for yourself without the college marketing machine giving you the impression that you can't survive without their brand of education.
The kind of education a student receives is ultimately up to the student, not up to the environment in which he has chosen for 4-5 years. Only then does college become an investment of time for the student, but parents still have an expense to cover.
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I couldn't agree more about how harmful all of this sense of entitlement is doing to kids today. Yet despite all the millions/billions of dollars in endowment funds colleges raise their tuition every year. I just hope that when kids graduate from many of these "country club" colleges that they are able to adjust to the real world.
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