Revisionist History Ep.5 - Food Fight: Gladwell being biased

One honorable person once said, “Power comes with responsibility”. As Malcolm Gladwell has a great influence on the public as a famous journalist and writer, I think he should have been more responsible about what he says at the podcast. To be frank, I was quite disappointed by how biased and illogical Gladwell was with his talk about the relationship between dining and financial aids of Vassar and Bowdoin.

Gladwell kept claiming that students who can afford full tuition should choose to go to Vassar rather than Bowdoin because Vassar is offering more financial aid to students, while Bowdoin is using all the money for school amenities and their fabulous dining. Listening to such podcast, I was expecting him to explain about the FA systems of Bowdoin, which he didn’t mention about. Thinking he is too biased, I searched about the FA systems of Bowdoin, and it took less than 5 minutes to find out that Bowdoin is a no loan school that offers need-blind admission with full-need. Considering this fact, I couldn’t understand his too simplistic assertion that Bowdoin allocates less money than Vassar, demanding them as unethical.

I also think that comparing only Vassar and Bowdoin is another problem because comparing to other LACs, Bowdoin’s Pell-eligible student rate is not particularly low. It means that offering a superior dining does not particularly lead to the low rate of providing financial aids, and as Gladwell also clarified that Bowdoin’s Pell-eligible student rate is about average, I think he shouldn’t have asserted that they are using their budget ‘immorally’.

Even if it’s true that Bowdoin allocates less money than Vassar, I think what he proposed as a solution to alleviate the education gap between the rich and poor is quite infeasible. What he suggested is that people should not apply for Bowdoin but Vassar because it is running out of budget while offering FA to many students; because there is no incentive for the students who are affordable to go to Vassar rather than Bowdoin. It is undeniable that if a student can pay full tuition, he or she would prefer the school with good facilities and amenities, together with the restaurant with Michelin stars that provides delectable dining to the school that provides poor dining and facilities rather than using his/her tuition fees to award FAs to others.

Instead, I think Vassar should allocate some amount of money to expand and improve the school facilities and environment so that they can allure the students who can pay full tuition. Naturally, they’ll need more money to do so and I know that budget deficit is one of the major problems of Vassar, but that’s the only option to offer opportunities to learn for more students. Besides, I believe that many of the citizens would gladly patronize and invest Vassar.

I do think the purpose of how Vassar uses its budget is very desirable and deserves admiration because it is just to give everyone a chance to learn, and financial aid is needed to do so. However, I am critical about how Vassar accomplishes its goal. As Gladwell mentioned at the podcast, Vassar needs money because their expenditure on offering FAs outweighs the money pulled in through tuition fees of other students, which means it keeps drawing a deficit budget. If Vassar keeps running out of money, they won’t be able to support the poor students who are eager to learn in the long term. Without ameliorating their school amenities, Vassar will be trapped in a vicious cycle. Full-tuition students go to Bowdoin because Vassar’s facilities are not gratifying to pay such a high price, and then Vassar has a tiny budget but high rates of Pell-eligible students, not being able to spend their budget on the facilities or dining. Then, even less full-tuition students will come to Vassar, and same things will repeat after and after.

If I were a student with American citizenship who requires financial aid and got admission to both colleges, I would choose Bowdoin, not Vassar, unlike the statistics. Because both schools are offering full aid without loan through need-blind admission to US citizens, and if I can choose, I would want better school amenities and fabulous dining. As a matter of fact, I would make the same choice, because I would want to deserve what I pay for. There might be some students who would think that their tuition fee is used to help others’ learning, but for me, student welfare like amenities, facilities, faculties, and dining takes higher priority because these factors are very important to one’s studying and standard of living.

I totally agree with Gladwell’s thinking that opportunity to learn should be equally distributed to everyone regardless of one’s wealth but not to his solution and the logic used to claim it. I think the feasible and rational solution to offer everyone the chance to study is not by recommending full tuition students to go to Vassar, not Bowdoin, but by giving subsidizing Vassar so that they can expand their school amenities to attract full tuition students so that they can sustainably support Pell-eligible students. Also, the trend of donating money after graduation to the colleges like Vassar or to the scholarship organizations can help reduce the education gap by the gap between the rich and poor.