Even in the 1950s, one of the highest priorities of most parents was to send their children to the best possible schools. Because the labor market has grown more competitive, this goal now looms even larger. It is no surprise that two-income families would choose to spend much of their extra income on better education. And because the best schools are in the most expensive neighborhoods, the imperative was clear: To gain access to the best possible public school, you had to purchase the most expensive house you could afford.

But what works for any individual family does not work for society as a whole. The problem is that a "good" school is a relative concept: It is one that is better than other schools in the same area. When we all bid for houses in better school districts, we merely bid up the prices of those houses...

Yet millions of families got into financial trouble simply because they understood that life is graded on the curve. The best jobs go to graduates from the best colleges, and because only the best-prepared students are accepted to those colleges, it is quixotic to expect parents to bypass an opportunity to send their children to the best elementary and secondary schools they can. The financial deregulation that enabled them to bid ever larger amounts for houses in the best school districts essentially guaranteed a housing bubble that would leave millions of families dangerously overextended.

I think the phenomena actually extends beyond the competition for the best public elementary and secondary schools. At the peak of the credit bubble, many families were taking out second mortgages on their home equity to help finance an education at a private college for their children. And as housing prices continue to decline -- and current trends show no signs of abating -- more families will find themselves owing more on their house than it is actually worth. To add insult to injury, if the debt for the high priced educations was supposed to be justified by a higher earning potential, the current recession and weakened job market will only serve to make times even more dear for families and recent grads.

The icing on the cake is the student loan industry. I think it's fair to say that most college's wouldn't be able to keep on raising tuition the way they have been if it were not for the easy availability of credit through student loan programs. The cruel irony is that the leftist academics who deride the ill-gotten gains of the financial services industry and Guilded Age excesses of today's America are largely benefiting from the enormous credit bubble that the industry has spawned over the last decade. After all, their salary is paid in part by the debt of the American middle class -- as reflected in the over-leveraged home equity lines and the mounting piles of student debt.

Thankfully, it seems like the era of cheap credit is over. Liar loans are a thing of the past, and banks are running out of the student loan industry faster than a philosophy major can say, "Would you like fries with that?" after graduating. But we'll see how well the universities weather the storm -- in both their endowments and in their sources of tuition revenue.

The missing link is the public role of financing higher education. Thirty years ago, public funds financed a much larger share of higher education's expenditures. Today, as Pell Grant and federal research funding stagnates, even ostensibly public universities are funding a much larger share of their activities through private sources. Look no further to see how much tuition has shot up at Cornell's contract colleges over the last decade to see these changes in action.

The final twist is that the public -- taxpayers like you and me -- may end up paying for our fair share of higher education after all. As the major financial institutions see the writing on the wall -- that the second mortgages and student loans that they underwrote to finance the goal of higher education may not be as sound as an investment as they thought it was -- there will be increasing political pressure for the U.S. government to assume these liabilities. Privatize the reward but socialize the risk. Don't think it will happen? Well, the Federal Reserve already agreed to eat the majority of the billions of dollars in bad bets that Bear Stearns made. Why couldn't it happen to Sallie Mae as well?

It kind of makes you wonder why we didn't just have greater public support for higher education in the first place. But then again, Citigroup founder Sandy Weill might not have been able to donate all the money that he has to Cornell.

N.B. MetaEzra interviewed Robert Frank last year. You can read the interview here.

We have already talked about Cornell's dedication to undergraduate financial aid, and how it is dedicating a greater share of its resources towards financial aid than its peer schools. But even in light of Cornell's generosity, it just doesn't appear to be wealthy or well-endowed enough to keep up with the other top private institutions on a peer student basis. And this disadvantage is really coming to light this admissions cycle.

Over on a popular message board for high school students, admitted students are eagerly trying to make their decision about which school to attend, and this post is really quite illuminating:

*Sigh*

Cornell grant aid: $2,000/year

Princeton grant: $32,000/year

Harvard grant: $35,000/year

...The sad thing is, I totally would've gone to Cornell over Harvard and Princeton if the financial aid was in any way decent. But with this kind of difference, it's goodbye Cornell.

But why would the student voluntarily choose Cornell over Harvard and Princeton? Well, in the student's own words:

I'm from NYC, but still working class, and Cornell felt comfortable in a way others didn't. Cornell's "any person, any study" thing did actually seem to be reflected in the students I met there, and it's an idea I like. The math department was very friendly, and after talking to several profs about math excitedly for a while I got the notion that prof interaction would, in fact, be possible as long as I seek it out. I like Ithaca and outdoors stuff, and I figure I have plenty of time to live in a city after college. The presence of the state-funded schools seems to give more academic/career goal diversity to Cornell than those other places, and it felt more down-to-earth.

Wouldn't it be nice if the student could choose between Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell without factoring cost into the equation? Isn't that one of the underlying ideas behind the Ivy League? The issue is already posing a big threat to Ivy League Athletics, and it looks like its going to inform the decisions of a lot of common admits as well. Cornell has enough to worry about in competing with schools that offer merit based financial aid packages... like Tufts, Emory, Vanderbilt, or WashU.

It's clear that the time has come for the University to take more creative steps towards financial aid for undergraduates.

How would a tuition discount but pledging a certain percentage of future income work out for students? Or what if the University was able to convince 200,000 alums to donate $1,000 each (or more) for financial aid purposes. That would net at least a $200M endowment, or at least $10M a year for financial aid. Perhaps this type of policy, in conjunction with some other innovative policy ideas might help to bring Cornell back to a proper competitive level.

But in another development on the financial aid front, it seems like Cornell's Financial Aid office has run into some trouble calculating financial aid packages for all accepted students. Three weeks after students have received their acceptance letter, and a week before they need to make one of the biggest decisions of their life, a fair number of students have not received their financial aid information.

That is a little troubling, if you ask us.

Matthew Nagowski | April 26, 2008 (#)

Weill Cornell: The Man Behind the School

In the first of an ongoing (and intermittent) series of articles, MetaEzra will explore some topics that we don't normally explore. Today, we're happy to have Ankit Patel '04, PhD '12 (the handsome man to your right), and current student-elected Overseer of Weill Cornell Medical College, talk a little bit about his home institution down in Manhattan. Please let our loyal readers be assured, however, lest Ankit sound a bit too serious and important, that during our freshman year together he was known for dangling pumpkins out of dorm room windows and swimming in Beebee Lake... naked... in the middle of December. We have pictures. -MPN

As a Cornell undergrad in spring of 2003, I attended a talk by Dr. Charles “Chuck” Bardes, Dean of Admissions from Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Bardes was a man in his mid 50’s with a jovial, soft-spoken personality whose most striking feature was a prominent bow-tie -- an appreciation for which I am slowly developing. He spoke to a room filled with anxious pre-meds looking how to customize their medical school applications to admission officer’s standards.

All of my peers were asking: “What does a medical school look for? What do you as a Dean of Admission want from a medical school applicant? What can I do to improve my odds to get into medical school?”

But through the whole session, I don’t recall once hearing about the specifics of Weill Cornell. What makes Weill Cornell…Weill Cornell?

Continue reading ...

Matthew Nagowski | April 24, 2008 (#)

Variations of Minesweeper at Cornell

I recently stumbled across a student-led engineering project at Cornell -- Cornell MineSweeper -- that supports a very noble cause.

The Cornell MineSweeper Project is a student-initiated effort to design and fabricate a low-cost, autonomous robotic vehicle to accurately detect landmines and facilitate their clearance. Cornell Minesweeper utilizes technologies in the areas of Machine Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Mechanical Design, and Landmine Detection. Our goal is to construct a robot that will become central to humanitarian demining missions. The robot will perform, with high efficiency and safety, the hazardous task of identifying the exact location of mines without risking human lives. This capability will benefit commercial, military, government and community interests across regions facing landmine infestation challenges.

The project has already earned accolades from Nobel Peace Prize winners as well as numerous campus prizes. We expect to hear even bigger things coming from the organization in the future, and it will be interesting to see if they team up with any International Relations majors to focus on marketing and deploying the project.

Coincidentally, this isn't the first time that minesweeping has been associated with Cornell. Last year, a sketch comedy group, Elephant Larry, out of New York City, made a splash with a trailer for a fictitious movie - Minesweeper: The Movie.

Now, you may be wondering what this amusing sketch has anything to do with Cornell:

The five young men of Elephant Larry all met at Cornell University as members of the sketch comedy group, The Skits-O-Phrenics. Alex and Stefan graduated in 1999, moving to New York City shortly afterwards. Four years later, Jeff, Chris, and Geoff did the same, and in the summer of 2002, Elephant Larry was born.

Cornell University: Minesweeping on both the Engineering Quad and the Arts Quad.

Matthew Nagowski | April 23, 2008 (#)