Higher Education

I'm not one who receives vast quantities of things in the mail - perhaps the Americans are good at filtering junk mail - but it seems recently I've received letters from "scholarly" organizations inviting me to join their "elite" society, reaping the rewards of their "many opportunities" in the process. All they ask is a $60-70 dollar admission fee and I have their name on my CV. When I was approached by the National Society for Collegiate Scholars I was sucked into their watermarked letter-headers and acceptance certificates, and so I forked out. Was it worth it? Not that I can see. I thought perhaps I had been selected for my obvious intellectual superiority, as is natural, but it turns out that a good percentage of students with better-than-average grades receive such letters. Yes, I may take advantage of their 8% discount at Barnes & Noble bookstores, but otherwise, I've played into the hands of the American public education machine. Here at the University of Arizona, as is similar with a number of other gargantuan campuses (40,000 students), new dormitories are being built left, right, and center. Not until after the construction has all-but finished do the bureaucrats consider the knock-on effects of such openings. The campus newspaper this week ran with the headline that 1000 parking spaces are to be lost on the already cluttered and expensive campus. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see a reduction in car-dependence, but when profit manufacture comes before the well-being and convenience of students, someone has to start pointing fingers. According to numerous sources, this university accepts roughly 85% of undergraduate applications each year. Note that these applications come fully equipped with a financial guarantee statement - god forbid a student wouldn't be able to afford the ever-increasing costs of tuition, textbooks, housing, and now, parking. It seems as though anyone could get in as long as they have the money to pay for it. We're on a slippery slope out here in the States; higher education is being increasingly dominated by profit orientated administrators, along with hospitals and the legal system.