Columbia University v. Jacobsen: Do Colleges Teach Wisdom, Justice, and Beauty?

In a case decided over 50 years ago, Columbia University sued Roy Jacobsen, a former student, to collect about $1,000 in unpaid tuition.

Jacobsen countersued, demanding $7,000 in damages. He claimed Columbia had not taught him what it promised. Specifically, Jacobsen pointed to language in a brochure that said it would teach students "wisdom, truth, character, enlightenment, understanding, justice, liberty, honesty, courage, beauty and similar virtues and qualities."

Jacobsen also argued that Columbia had not lived up to its Latin motto: In lumine tuo videbimus lumen ("In your light, we shall see light") and a similar inscription over the college chapel: "Wisdom dwelleth in the heart of him that hath understanding."

In essence, as the appellate court noted in its opinion, Jacobsen's essential beef was that Columbia "does not teach wisdom as it claims to do."

Not surprisingly, a New Jersey trial court dismissed Jacobsen's claims, and the appellate court affirmed the lower court's decision.

"[W]isdom is not a subject which can be taught," the court observed,  and "no rational person would accept such a claim by any man or institution."

Obviously, the New Jersey court is correct. Students should not be able to sue a college because they failed to obtain all the intangible benefits that the college breezily promised in its brochures.

Nevertheless, the Jacobsen case reminds us that students need to think about why they signed up for college before writing those tuition checks.

The average cost of attending Columbia is more than $80,000 per year. Nobody lays out that kind of bread to get a deeper understanding of wisdom, justice, and beauty.

No, when students enroll at Columbia, they do so for one primary reason. They hope to benefit enough from their education to obtain a good job--one that justifies their student loans.

In lumino tuo videbimus lumin: What the hell does that mean?

Omicron variant harasses American colleges: "I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand!"

 Porter Wagoner, singing about a chance encounter with an ex-girlfriend, quickly bade farewell. "I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand," he tells her.

College students are singing the same song. The COVID pandemic has been with us for almost two years, and Omicron promises to prolong the disruption well into 2022.

This week, several colleges announced that final exams for the fall semester would be online, and classes at some schools were temporarily switched to online formats earlier in the fall term.  

NYU recently banned all "discretionary, nonessential nonacademic gatherings," presumably allowing nonessential academic meetings to proceed. At some schools, students who meet friends over pizza and beer at an off-campus dive run the risk of being suspended from their classes.

Since the campus closings in March 2020, students have sued more than 300 colleges, demanding their money back. Specifically, they want tuition refunds for classes that switched from face-to-face classroom settings to an online format.

They also want their fees refunded--the fees they paid for access to campus recreation centers, varsity sporting events, and collegiate health clinics. You closed all these venues, the students argue, but you kept our goddam money.

As I have said since the beginning of the pandemic, I sympathize with the universities.  College leaders acted reasonably when they closed their campuses in the spring of 2020, cleared out the dorms, and sent students home.

But the students who got booted paid big bucks to take classes during the 2020 spring semester.  At the private schools, tuition bills were north of 25 grand! Many students shelled out $30,000 for the dubious privilege of matriculating at snooty universities for four months when you tack on housing, fees, and books.

Colleges responded reasonably to a public health crisis when they closed down in March of 2020, but they need to understand that it costs too damn much to go to college these days. Students will put up with this banditry when they can stroll through elm-shaded campus quads and listen to gassy professors opining in quaint, wood-paneled classrooms.

But they ain't gonna put up with face-to-face college classes periodically going online or rules that prevent them from meeting their friends off-campus.  Not for long anyway.

College enrollments are already down significantly from pre-pandemic levels.  Men, in particular, are increasingly deciding to sit out of college until the chaos comes to an end.

What can colleges do to entice students to continue taking out loans to pay their tuition bills?  They can start by publicly admitting that online classes are inferior to on-campus learning and lowering their prices accordingly.

Porter Wagoner: "I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand!"

Paul Campos says that college presidents and varsity coaches "are robbing us blind," and he is right

Paul Campos, a professor at the University of  Colorado Law School, wrote an essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education on the astounding salaries paid to college football and basketball coaches, who are now making far more money than university presidents. 

Campos commented specifically on the salary paid to Louisiana State University's new football coach, Brian Kelly, and Michigan State University's contract with its football coach, Mel Tucker. Tucker and Kelly both got ten-year contracts worth $95 million.

Varsity coaches are paid far more than college presidents, but they too are making out like bandits. As Campos points out:

[T]he outrageous athletic salaries can even seem to justify the administrative overpay. By a kind of perverse psychological effect, paying a college football coach $10 million per year makes paying a university president $1.5 million, a provost $800,000, and various vice provosts and vice chancellors $500,000 each seem positively parsimonious by comparison. 

Campos notes that most universities operate as tax-exempt charitable institutions,  but they have been captured "by the most rapacious forms of contemporary capitalism." Or, as the Campos essay's headline put it, "Coaches and Presidents Are Robbing Us Blind."

Meanwhile, undergraduates are increasingly being taught by graduate students and non-tenured instructors who are paid a mere pittance.  At my former university, some instructors are paid less than $3,000 per course. If they teach five courses per semester (a killing teaching load), they work at the poverty level.

Meanwhile, the football coach makes three-quarters of a million dollars a year.

LSU's new football coach makes $9.5 million a year and gets personal access to private jet

Senator Chuck Schumer Wants to Extend Moratorium on Student-Loan Payments: Is that a Good Idea?

Quite a few country songs are about guys who made a big mistake when they were young and went to prison.

Merle Haggard tells a story about a man who “turned 21 in prison, doin’ life without parole.” George Jones eulogizes a wretch who spent eighteen years in the slammer “and still has life to go.” And Porter Wagner sings about a guy rotting in a cell because he stabbed his wife and her lover in a fit of rage.

Heck, even Wanda Jackson, the queen of rockabilly, wails out a song about a riot in cell block number 9.

Student-loan debtors can empathize with these prison songs. Like the people Merle, George, Porter, and Wanda sang about, they made a big mistake when they were young and spent their adult lives dealing with the consequences.

Indeed, that is the great tragedy of the student-loan crisis. Young people borrow tons of money to pay for their college education when they are clueless about what they want to do with their lives.

Then they graduate from college (or drop out) and can’t pay back their loans. Interest and penalties accrue, causing their original loan balances to double or triple, and ultimately, they realize they’re facing a lifetime of debt, which they can’t discharge in bankruptcy.

College debtors got a break when the COVID pandemic hit in the spring of 2020. The Department of Education allowed them to skip their monthly loan payments without penalty and without interest accruing on their loans. But that reprieve comes to an end next month.

Senator Chuck Schumer and other progressive congressional leaders want President Biden to extend the student-debt moratorium yet again.

I think that’s a mistake, which will only prolong the misery.

No, Congress should face the fact that the federal student loan program is a catastrophe. Our national legislators need to amend the Bankruptcy Code to allow distressed student borrowers to discharge their student-loan debt in bankruptcy.

Also, the feds need to put severe pressure on the colleges and universities to lower their tuition prices.

Finally, we need to shut down the for-profit college sector and shut down dodgy graduate programs—the third-rate law degrees and vacuous MBAs.

Otherwise, we are just enlarging an enormous debtors prison that now holds more than 45 million inmates.

Wanda Jackson: "There's a riot goin' on."

 

LSU Football Coach Brian Kelly: Can a Guy from Notre Dame Sell Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers?

 Brian Kelly hasn't even started work yet as LSU's new football coach, and people are already making fun of him for trying to speak with a southern accent. Even Jeff Foxworthy ("You might be a redneck") got in on the fun. 

Hey, give the guy a break. Until he was in the hunt for the LSU football coach's job, Brian Kelly had never even been to Louisiana. So give him points for trying.  

But here's my advice to Coach Kelly. Louisianians have a multitude of accents, and Kelly needs to carefully choose a particular accent and then stick with it. 

His new contract includes 50 free hours on the LSU private jet. I suggest that he fly around the state and choose an accent that works for him.

First, he should fly up to Shreveport and then drive east to Claiborne Parish--on the Arkansas border. 

Those North Louisianians have an accent all their own.  But here's a warning: Don't poke fun at the way they talk, or they'll kill you.

Then take a leisurely drive through Acadiana.  Talk with people from Pierre Part, Galliano, Bayou Pigeon, or Grosse Tete.  Accents in that part of Louisiana vary from town to town, but they all fall under the broad heading of Cajun. Coach Brian might want to choose one of the Acadian accents.

Or he might explore the Irish Channel in New Orleans. Now that's a distinctive accent.

But Coach Brian shouldn't worry about getting his southern accent right. A southern accent is the easiest thing in the world to pick up. Even Hillary Clinton can do it. No need to sign up for Rosetta Stone. Just pop a couple of quaaludes and wash them down with a 40, and you're on your way.

No, Coach Kelly should worry about losing his southern accent after he acquires it. Six months from now, Coach Kelly may sound like Senator Lindsey Graham. But if he goes back to South Bend, Indiana, to visit old friends, they'll all laugh at him.

So Tiger fans shouldn't fret. Kelly will get the southern accent down within a few months. 

No, my biggest worry is whether Coach Kelly can hawk Raising Cane's chicken fingers with enthusiasm and conviction. Coach O could do it. Coach Miles could do it. Can Coach Kelly do it?

I say we give Coach Kelly a tryout to see if he can credibly do a Raising Cane's chicken fingers commercial. If he can't get that right, let's buy out his contract!

Coach O could sell those chicken fingers!

LSU signs $95 million contract with new football coach: "We must have been our of our minds."

 John Prine and Melba Montgomery recorded a great country song a few years ago: We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds." The song tells the story of a couple who foolishly broke up because they both thought they loved someone else.

Then they realized their mistake. 

They both turned out to be the wrong kind. Oh, we must have been out of our minds.

That song should be LSU's theme song.  A few days ago, LSU hired Brian Kelly, who currently coaches at Notre Dame, to be LSU's next football coach. 

LSU and Kelly signed a ten-year contract for $95 million. Ninety-five million! And that doesn't include various incentives and endorsements. I predict Kelly will soon be promoting chicken fingers on local television stations--which will earn him even more money.

Kelly is 60 years old. What are the odds that he'll still be coaching for LSU ten years from now?

Not good, I believe. Scott Rabalais, a sports columnist for the Baton Rouge Advocate, pointed out that seven of the last ten LSU football coaches were fired.

LSU bought out its last two coaches' contracts. The university cashed out Les Miles for $10 million. Coach Orgeron, LSU's current football coach, got bought out for $17 million. 

And Miles and Orgeron both brought home national championships!

Stephanie Riegel, writing last year for the Baton Rouge Business Report, said LSU is mired in moral bankruptcy. She referenced a video of the 2019 football championship team dancing to a "bounce" song titled Get the Gat at the White House.

The lyrics of Get the Gat are misogynistic, to put it mildly. Here are some sample lines:

You ain’t nun but a dope man’s bitch . . .

Cuz I’m a [N word] wit a rock hard bone
And I’m takin’ one of these hoes home.

Gat, by the way, is a slang word for a gun. 

LSU must be out of its mind. The university recently renovated the football team's locker room at the cost of $28 million. The revamped facilities include a performance nutrition center and cushy study areas that feature "sleep pods." 

Meanwhile, the LSU library looks like a Dollar Store on the wrong side of town, and the university is muddling through a sexual misconduct scandal by student-athletes.

LSU's communications execs tireless assure the public that all the costs run up by the football program are paid by the athletic foundation, not tuition money.  Maybe that's true.

Nevertheless, all this football hype is not improving LSU's academic standing. The law school dropped 13 places in last year's U.S. News & World Report rankings. The university as a whole ranks 1lth in the U.S. News rankings among the fourteen schools in the Southeast Conference, just above Missippi State, Old Miss, and Arkansas.

But LSU is number one in at least one category. The university is the first SEC school to sign a sports-betting contract with a gaming company.

Go Tigers!

Sleep pod in LSU football locker room: Nighty Night!

How to Choose A College: Advice Originally Posted on WalletHub

Jacob Sanders, a journalist with WalletHub, kindly asked me to share my advice on the various roles of college towns for an upcoming WalletHub article.

Titled 2022's Best College Towns and Cities in America, WalletHub posted the article yesterday, including my commentary. The article was authored by Adam McCann and contains advice from several higher education policy experts, including Mark Haynel, Alexander Jun, Herman Walston, and Joseph Paris.

Here are my answers to five WalletHub questions about college towns:

1. In deciding which university to attend, how important is the surrounding city/town?

A college's surrounding city or town is a crucial element to weigh when choosing a college.

At one time, small liberal arts colleges in rural areas and small towns were very attractive to college students. There are many small private colleges, especially in New England and the mid-Atlantic states. Some are affiliated with religious denominations or were started by philanthropists in the nineteenth century. Sweetbriar in Virginia is an example of such a school. Rural charm and a lovely campus were once very appealing.

These small schools are less attractive now. First, most college students now prefer to attend college in a big city with a more exciting social scene and more opportunities to make connections that lead to jobs.

Second, the small private colleges are pretty expensive. Tuition alone can be north of $50,0000 a year.

Finally, enrollment declines have hit the small private colleges very hard, especially the more obscure schools. Some of these small colleges are having trouble attracting students. Several have closed or are teetering on the brink of closure. No one wants to get a degree from a college that may not exist ten years after the student graduates.

In my opinion, students should not take out student loans to study at an expensive liberal arts college, particularly one with no nationwide visibility. 

On the other hand, colleges and universities in large cities have drawbacks as well. Crime is a growing problem in urban America, and violent crime is on the rise. Many urban schools are located near dangerous neighborhoods. For example, Tigerland, a once-popular area near LSU, with many student-oriented apartments, has become a slum with frequent incidents of violent crime, including murder. It would be a grave mistake for a young person to rent an apartment in a neighborhood like Tigerland. And many urban universities are located near dicey neighborhoods that are similar to Tigerland.

2. Are college cities/towns a good option for retirees? What about families?

College towns are attractive to retirees because they offer many activities for the larger community, like athletics, theater, performing arts events, book fairs, etc. But the cost of living in urban college towns can be pretty high. When I attended law school at the University of Texas, Austin was known as a mellow town with a low cost of living. It was once a great place to live for students, retirees, and families. (I once bought a one-dollar ticket to hear Willie Nelson perform.)

Today, the cost of living in Austin, TX, is out of sight, and traffic is choking the freeways and streets. It is still a lovely place to live, but housing is quite expensive -- took expensive for most retirees.

Some college towns have good public schools that attract families, but some do not have good schools. The public schools in Texas are generally good in the college towns: College Station (Texas A & M), Denton (University of North Texas), etc. But the urban schools in Louisiana are failing, and few people would move to the college town of Baton Rouge for the public schools. 

3. How can parents prepare their children for managing finances in college (student loans, credit cards, etc.)?

Parents need to be vigilant about how their children finance their education. On no account should a parent or grandparent take out a Parent PLUS loan to help a young relative pay for college. Parent PLUS loans are just as hard to discharge in bankruptcy as regular student loans, and a parent who suffers an illness or a job loss and has Parent PLUS loan obligations will face a financial nightmare.

In my opinion, parents should steer their children away from expensive, so-called "luxury" student housing and encourage them to live in a dorm for at least a couple of years. Students should not take out loans to finance an unsustainable luxury lifestyle while they are in college. And parents do their children no favors by giving their kids fancy cars and unlimited access to credit cards. College students need to live on a budget while in school because they will undoubtedly be constrained by a budget after they graduate. Loading a debit card with a fixed monthly spending limit will teach students to manage their budget.

Parents should resist the allure of elite colleges that are expensive and may not benefit their children in the long run. I got a doctorate from Harvard Graduate School of Education because I was dazzled by its reputation. But the graduate education program at Harvard was no better than the programs at many public universities, and Harvard was very expensive. I admit I made a mistake.

4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of going to college in-state vs. out-of-state?

Going to college out of state is often a good idea. Going to another state to study exposes the student to a larger world. For example, kids from small midwestern towns can benefit from living in a more lively urban environment. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, but I did my doctorate at Harvard. (But I wish I had gone to school somewhere else besides Harvard.)

Out-of-state tuition is higher than in-state tuition at public universities, which is a drawback. But public colleges across America are recruiting out-of-state students aggressively, and young people with good academic credentials (high ACT scores, good grades, etc.) have a very good chance of getting a scholarship. I know of a Louisiana family who sent a child to the University of Alabama rather than LSU because it was cheaper to go out of state due to the scholarship aid.

5. How can local authorities make their cities/towns more appealing to both new students and potential residents?

Crime, crime, crime. College towns must invest sufficient resources in law enforcement to keep students and residents safe. College professors and their students tend to be more progressive than the general population and may think defunding the police is a good idea. But it is not a good idea. Universities must make sure their campus police forces are trained not to use unnecessary force and to be sensitive to a diverse student population. Still, in my experience, campus police forces are very mindful of the needs of their students and remarkably tolerant of students who do boneheaded things. Protecting students from sexual assaults and alcohol-related injuries depends in part on having a professional local police force.

College towns also need to keep real estate development under control, which many college towns are not doing. Real estate developers have built thousands of apartments in the flood plain south of LSU in my community. Many are touted as luxury student housing. LSU and Baton Rouge do not have the infrastructure to support all this development, and the rental housing is overbuilt. The city does not recognize what is happening, but outside investors are building too much housing that will one day become slums.