Tilting at Tuition Windmills

 Sept 24, 2012

What's with Blogger? It went from displaying 10 entries on this page to four, without being asked to. The preferences still say 10. It's like the shaky old days before Google bought it.

Got another gimme letter from my alma mater a while ago, which I found today under one of the stacks of papers that grow on one of my desks. "Vanderbilt is already full of energy as students arrive on campus and the preparations for the new academic year intensify," says one of the opening sentences. Yep, that and early-year parties.

One September dorm night many years ago I remember learning how to play Thumper with a circle a people I'd just met. That evening I became acquainted with a fellow who later became a close friend. He drank more enthusiastically than I did, and threw up vigorously in the bathroom. These days he's a tenured professor of history at a different Southern university.

Back to the gimme letter. I have a deal for VU. I'll start donating money after tuition has been lowered to the equivalent of what it was 30 years ago (1982 tuition, adjusted for inflation, that is). Heck, they can add 5 percent to that adjusted figure, just in case the inflation calculations are a little rough. It wasn't an inexpensive school back then, as I recall. But it wasn't insanely expensive, either.