When I was a college president, I was never able to give incoming freshmen the honest talk I wanted to. But had I done so, here’s what I would have said:</p>
<p>HELLO to you first-year students. I’m Laudable’s president. The next time we’ll see each other is when you graduate.</p>
<p>Most likely, that won’t be in four years, but in about 55 months. That’s because a good many of you won’t finish on time. And, because college presidents last only about six years and I’ve already been on campus for two, perhaps I won’t even be here.</p>
<p>I know you’re worried about money. I’m not telling you or your folks anything new when I say that Laudable looks expensive. The tuition increases here, just like those of our competitors, have outstripped the rate of increase in the consumer price index for years. This fall, tuition, room and board averages almost $32,000 at Laudable and other private colleges, and more than $15,000 at public ones.</p>
<p>But hold on. Most of you and your parents don’t pay for everything yourselves. In public four-year institutions, some 4 in 10 undergraduates get financial aid. At private places like Laudable, more than 80 percent of you do. Just like the auto industry, we have a sticker price and we have the price people really pay.</p>
<p>And like car dealers, we force you to borrow money to help make up the difference. You will probably owe more than $20,000, on average, when you leave Laudable. Graduates of public institutions will owe, on average, more than $15,000.</p>
<p>How will many of you begin your adult lives?</p>
<p>In serious debt.</p>
<p>We certainly take a lot of your money. But we ship money back to you. How much? This year, Laudable will spend more than $41,000 to educate each of you. At public institutions, it will be more than $31,000 per student. Some schools have huge endowments that help them generate the money they need to educate you (Harvard has more than $26 billion to count on). But most schools are like Laudable: we need your tuition dollars. Bottom line: money in and money out. </p>
<p>Laudable could be cheaper, but you wouldn’t like it. You and your parents have made it clear that you want the best. That means more spacious and comfortable student residences (‘‘dormitories,’’ we used to call them), gyms with professional exercise equipment, better food of all kinds, more counselors to attend to your growing emotional needs, more high-tech classrooms and campuses that are spectacularly handsome.</p>
<p>Our competitors provide such things, so we do too. We compete for everything: faculty, students, research dollars and prestige. The more you want us to give to you, the more we will be asking you to give to us. We aim to please, and that will cost you. It’s been a long time since scholarship and teaching were carried on in monastic surroundings.