Education is a topic I’m preoccupied with, in part because the skills gap is something nearly every business person I know is concerned about (as I wrote in my column last week), but also because I’m the mother of a high school junior who’s beginning to look at colleges. Last Monday, we attended the first of the formal tours, at Barnard (my alma mater) and Columbia.
On the one hand, the resources and opportunities were amazing, even more so than when I attended. Thousands of classes (as the Barnard tour guide told us, more than one for every student in the school), research opportunities with top professors pretty much on demand, and a variety of cultural and extracurricular offerings made me feel slightly paralysed by the tyranny of choice. Should we explore the African American model’s role in modern art? Take a virtual reality tour of the Columbia engineering school? Attend a lecture on identity and integration of Latino immigrants in Canada?
Both campuses had been significantly upgraded since I graduated in 1992, with state of the art buildings designed by top architects. The tour guides boasted about the rather phenomenal dining services. At John Jay Dining Hall, where I carb-loaded my way to the freshman 15, you can apparently now request specialty meals prepared to suit all your possible gluten-free, vegan, Paleo, double half cap soy needs. There’s even a surf and turf night where students are treated to steak and lobster served on frisbees in the communal square. Our Barnard guide boasted of the superior counselling and group therapy services (“which is great since we’re all living in this crazy, stressed out time”), as well as the “well woman” space where students could get massages and facials. Everything that the wealthy, indebted or deeply scholarship-subsidised attendee could want, for $71,282 per year.