You can see why people would be skeptical of college endowments. What some of these journalists should do together with their routine rankings is to investigate schools’ service to their communities and to the country. Things like research, George Will *68’s idea of training leadership — and Princeton’s very aggressive approach to financial aid. Yes, and also the fact that Princeton has almost doubled its undergraduate headcount since my undergraduate days. (Alumni like to complain about too many buildings on campus. Well, this is one reason.) Harvard has maintained the same graduating class size that it had 55 years ago, but it has a vast array of institutes serving the public interest, with as many employees as on the academic side. Stories like these need to be told before anyone jumps to too many conclusions about whether the tax-advantaged status of educational finance is well-deserved or not.
You can see why people would be skeptical of college endowments. What some of these journalists should do together with their routine rankings is to investigate schools’ service to their communities and to the country. Things like research, George Will *68’s idea of training leadership — and Princeton’s very aggressive approach to financial aid. Yes, and also the fact that Princeton has almost doubled its undergraduate headcount since my undergraduate days. (Alumni like to complain about too many buildings on campus. Well, this is one reason.) Harvard has maintained the same graduating class size that it had 55 years ago, but it has a vast array of institutes serving the public interest, with as many employees as on the academic side. Stories like these need to be told before anyone jumps to too many conclusions about whether the tax-advantaged status of educational finance is well-deserved or not.