Justifying Princeton

If you had $40,000 to spend making the world a better place, how would you use it? Chances are your first answer was not, "I would purchase a year's worth of education from Princeton."

How then, with knowledge of the world's monolithic injustices, can we justify to ourselves the luxury of a Princeton education? Sure, not all undergraduates are charged full tuition. But only 50 percent of the student body is receiving financial aid and many of us who do receive aid are still paying a steep sum from a global perspective.

In recent months, Princeton students and professors have used these pages to opine on the exorbitance of book prices, eating club fees and Ralph Lauren shopping sprees. Strangely enough, none have commented on the (far more lavish) cost of the education itself. There must be a sensible reason why approximately half the student body is willing to fork over $40,000 a year, preferring Princeton to a decent instate school.

Most discussions of college costliness inevitably sympathize with the paying student. A few years ago, Professor Philip Greenspun of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology went so far as to give each of his students a $100 "refund" out of his own pocket, claiming the school's tuition fees were "immoral." That adjective, in this case, described the greed of university officials, preying on helpless undergraduates for ever greater flows of cash.

Here's a different frame of reference. According to Oxfam, one packet of potentially lifesaving Oral Rehydration Salts costs approximately 10 cents. One year of tuition could save the lives of up to 400,000 people suffering from life-threatening diarrhea and dehydration. Who faces the moral question now?

In a free market society with university-level education dominated by private institutions, it is something of a non sequitur to contend that tuition fees are "immorally" high for students and families. Is it immoral for a Mercedes dealer to charge $80,000 for a car?

The truly significant question is whether it's moral for anyone to actually buy that car.

To my mind, there are really only four ways for the humanitarian-minded student to justify his Princeton education. I will label these the financial, influential, institutional and objective models:

Financial: You've got to spend money to make money, and a university education is a fairly useful tool on the path to accumulating wealth. The simplest way to redeem a luxuriant education is to view it as an investment which will generate even more money, which in turn can be put to good use. The student who strives for the greatest income after graduation is acting more ethically, ironically, than the student who intends to pursue graduate study in ethics.

Influential: A slightly altered form of the financial solution, the influential model involves the accumulation of social cache, status and power toward a morally good goal. A Princeton education naturally affords all three of these, and it is only fitting that they should be put to good use. While a degree from the Wilson School or the politics department may not lead to a six-figure income after graduation, it could certainly help secure a powerful position in governance or public administration.

Institutional: By paying tuition to Princeton, we are not merely purchasing a personal education — we are contributing to a body that strives, as an institution, to the advancement of humankind. Laboratories, researchers and projects otherwise "in the service of all nations" all require a steady source of income.

Objective: "These great universities — which can split the atom [and] find cures for the most terrible diseases ... cannot generate a modest program of general education for undergraduate students."

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In this view, here expressed by Allan Bloom, the university represents a repository of culture — its primary goal should be to introduce students to the eternal questions rather than "finding cures for terrible diseases." Attempting to derive instrumental value from a university education is antithetical to its purpose. Contemplating Plato is simply a more forceful moral imperative for the intellectual than developing good governance in Africa.

Undoubtedly some combination is required to describe the average student's thinking. But whether it is obtaining a luxury car or an Ivy League education, the fundamental question concerns the just allocation of resources. And from the number of Mercedes' I see around campus, I assume there's a solution I'm missing. J.R. de Lara is a politics major from Ithaca, New York. He can be reached at jdelara@princeton.edu.