“A minefield of drunken gropings and sexual assaults.” That’s the picture painted of American universities, and it’s partly true, says Amanda Foreman. But there’s something even more striking about US campus life: it’s “jaw-droppingly luxurious”. To take two examples: the University of Missouri boasts an indoor beach club, modelled on one in the Playboy mansion, with its own waterfall and grotto; while Texas Tech has a two-acre water park. The fact is, US colleges are far richer than British ones; and they compete in an “amenities arms race”. Cambridge, our richest university, has almost £5bn ($7.5bn) in endowments; by contrast, Harvard and Yale have $32bn and $20bn respectively. US colleges also offer students another enviable luxury – “total freedom of intellectual exploration”. In the UK, students have to specialise: there, they can select courses from a range of disciplines. As an undergraduate in the US, my studies included philosophy, music and chemistry. Leicester University is now switching to this more flexible system: let’s hope others follow. If we can’t give our students water slides, let’s at least give them a rounded education. (Amanda Foreman, The Sunday Times).
The problem with this interpretation is that there is an arms race among American universities to provide amenities that are (excuse me, Ms. Foreman) quite unnecessary to actual education and which push up the cost to students and their worried parents. The Great Further Education Bubble involves chasing the increasingly fewer people who can afford them. If and when some of these outfits go bust they cannot use the facilities for anything else – there is no “resale value” to a college campus. Yes, I like the more rounded educational possibilities (in theory), and wish I had not specialised as much in my time. But at $50-60,000 a year, (unless you get a scholarship and depending whether we are talking about public or private colleges), then yes, the American system is great; if Mum and Dad have the money; if you don’t mind lectures given graduate students and part- time, underpaid adjunct teachers; and if you seldom even see a professor, let alone hear words of wisdom from him or her. No quite as attractive as Ms. Foreman makes out!