Good to know OpinionJournal has a sense of humor.
But I have a better solution, one that's even more radical but allows you to stay in your American suburb, work within the old-fashioned American free market and avoid religious vows. How about banding together with some other students to hire tutors?
There are thousands of under-employed Ph.D.s in America who could be paid to offer college-level courses in your living room. If 10 students banded together and put up $10,000 each--students who, say, couldn't care less about football, don't need a Women's Center and have no urge to join Delta Delta Delta--they could hire two high-end intellectuals, pay them $50,000 each and get personal instruction.
Higher Learning, a Tutorial
Pop quiz: Is the cost of a college education worth it? (No.) Is there an alternative? (Yes.)
BY MARK OPPENHEIMER
Friday, February 17, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Let's say that you're the parent of a high-school senior who has finally sent off all her college applications. (Feb. 1 is about the last deadline.) The fog of stress has lifted, and a sense of normalcy has returned to family dinners. Now it's time to check your savings account.
If your daughter or son is accepted at one of the 10 most expensive schools in the country--George Washington University, say, or Kenyon College--then your tuition bill will be more than $33,000, a figure that doesn't include room, board, books and fees, which can total about $12,000 more a year. If little Madison is bound for the University of Wisconsin at Madison, you'll fare better, but even state-college tuition can be rough: The University of Massachusetts, for example, costs about $14,000 a year, including room and board, if you're a state resident and much more if you're not.
There are federal loans and grants, of course. And private schools often provide financial aid to half of their students, a kind of capitalism/socialism hybrid according to which the families with money subsidize those without (the Swedes like this sort of thing). But even so, higher education has to be considered one of America's greatest market failures: absurdly expensive, with little price competition, tuitions increasing ahead of inflation and no good gauge to measure quality. After all, Cornell might be worth $30,000 a year, but is La Verne University, in La Verne, Calif., worth $22,800, not counting room and board?
