In the past year, there have been quite a few stirrings about expanding the University, with relatively little public discussion about it or what it means. However, before the University takes action on expanding, I’d like a little more discussion on why we shouldn’t.
President Eisgruber ’83 first mentioned the idea last fall when he suggested that the University can and should expand, either by expanding Forbes College or by building an entirely new residential college. Last September, he floated the idea by alumni, asking them to donate in order to “give that gift [of a Princeton education] to more students this year.”
In response, Christian Wawrzonek ’16 wrote a column advocating for this expansion to take place. He highlights numerous problems in higher education and deftly argues why there must be an increase in access to highly selective and high-caliber universities. Yet, his proposed solution to specifically increase the University, although indisputably well-intended, is too narrow-minded.
Let me start by saying that I agree with most of the points surrounding this size problem among high-caliber schools. I sympathize with students who deserve to be at these high-caliber universities but simply do not get in because of size limitations. I don’t think I was or am any better than my magnet high school peers who applied and did not get in. These schools could likely be filled tenfold and not run out of amazing students to fill their classrooms. As Wawrzonek said, “plenty of other equally qualified students are missing this opportunity.” And it’s true that colleges have done little or nothing to accommodate for the increase in the college-aged population and therefore the increase in the high-achieving college-aged population.
But expanding the University too much to meet this demand would rob it of its unique character and value. It isn’t the “exclusivity” itself that makes Princeton. Rather, it really is the practical manifestations of that which help make Princeton and its peers special. It’s the small class sizes. It’s the access to amazing faculty. It’s the ability to participate and lead extracurricular activities. It’s being able to recognize a quorum of people when you walk into a room. These things would be lost if the University continued to expand, hurting both the current and the proposed increase of students. Maybe this change will not occur if we only add another hundred students, but if the trend continues, Princeton and its peers like Yale, which is currently expanding, will begin to lose some of the qualities that make them such amazing places.
In the end, the University will likely prioritize this characteristic and will not expand so far that those qualities would be lost. (For one, it might risk its #1 U.S. News & World Report ranking.) This means that expanding is simply a Band-Aid for a larger societal problem which Princeton and its peers cannot solve independentlythrough expanding just a bit here and there. Even Wawrzonek admits that increasing the students at the Ivies and their peers would only be a short-term solution to a larger problem in higher education.
To be honest, the simple answer is that we need more high-caliber universities. And while that may seem extreme, it isn’t. New colleges are built when demand exists — for example, after World War II, when the GI bill increased the number of college-bound students. Given that we now have both a need and a demand for high-caliber universities to accommodate the abundance of intelligent high school graduates, it seems reasonable to me that new schools be created. Creating a new college that provides the same level of education and resources and the same experience as Princeton does now is just as good of a solution that would not hurt Princeton’s value, which ultimately hurts both the students that would be here anyway and the additional students.
I know what you may be thinking; I realize I am making this seem a lot simpler than it is. It takes a lot of resources to create a prestigious university out of the blue. But it has been done before. Stanford for example, was created as a prestigious university from the start, and this was achieved with the help of financial resources and advisors brought in from other prominent universities of the time. And were society to agree that this is a need we must remedy, it can be done.
One might say that a new university wouldn’t have the same prestige or name recognition as Princeton, and thus would be less valuable and not as beneficial to students. But the truth is, if the new university truly does match Princeton in its education and life standards, we as a society should value it as an equal. The age of a university shouldn’t be the only determinant for its value. Reasonable people will recognize this once they graduate.
Princeton and its peers should be encouraging and aiding the creation of such schools. Though this takes more of a coordinated effort and will, it would be a more sustainable solution to the problem of limited resources at current high-caliber universities than incurring costs to students by expanding.
Marni Morse is a politics major from Washington, D.C.She can be reached at mlmorse@princeton.edu.
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