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E-PrinceOne of the main cultural differences I’ve noticed during my time in America is that social class, a reasonably constant presence in English society, doesn’t seem to exist. Money is what defines you here — the rich, the poor ...(back to the article)
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From his writing, I really like this Rob Day kid. Almost as much as the non-exchange Rob Day…
I think this guy is biased toward his European perspective. Non-Americans never seem to understand the superiority of the American way.
"even though your income is much more important here, you do less to help the poorest students."
how do we do less to help the poorest students?
"If a university as large as Brown still requires the poorest to pay $2,000 a year out of their own pocket toward their education, and low-income students can’t afford to take part in extracurriculars even at Princeton"
the 2k, while unfortunate, is not that hard to cover if you have a campus job. and what kinda extracurrics are poor princetonians unable to participate in?
"Non-Americans never seem to understand the superiority of the American way." Neither do Americans.
"On the other hand, it shocks me — though perhaps this is due to my socialist British sensibilities — how little financial support is available to American undergraduates."
Right you are; the excessive costs of education is a direct result of government subsidies.
A great article, very articulate.
"Money is what defines you here — the rich, the poor, those somewhere in-between — but the English class system is less about what you earn and more about who you were born as."
And that's why English feudalism sucks. You can be anything you want in America. In England, you need Her Holiness' permission to get ahead. English feudalism is inherently zero-sum: there can only be one queen, only so many nobles, etc. WTF is a "queen" anyway.
These English exchange students do not have sufficient experience in the American system in order to write about it. Please refrain from contributing to our newspaper again in the future.
Two points Rob. 1. $60,000 a year is pretty close to working class in the U.S. I graduated in 2001 and earn 2.5 times your father's salary and certainly don't consider myself anything above middle class, I earned $60,000 right out of Princeton and while it was easy enough to live as a single person in the states, I wouldn't be able to support my wife and I on that salary today.
2. Schools like Princeton offer amazing support to poor folks, particularly after they revised their financial aid system a few years back. Poor families get a full ride. These students are also all eligible for Federal Stafford loans which offer them more than enough cash to cover any differences in financial aid and say cost for books etc. that may or may not be covered by Princeton. The % of students who are the first in their family to attend college has been rapidly climbing at Princeton and is starting to near 10%. That is amazing when you consider that many state schools and community colleges are at that level.
ROB DAY IS MY BEST FRIEND
Stop giving the real Rob Day a bad name. If you're going to keep contributing to the Prince, at least change your columnist name to "Robert Day."