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I heard your show about being a liberal at 20 and a conservative at 40. I thought it was interesting when you mentioned it had its history in France in the 1800's if I remember correctly. You said that at 20 you were for a republic and at 40 you were a monarchist or you didn't have your head. I wonder if this has anything to do with the guillotine and the French Revolution. Just a thought... I really enjoyed the topic.

A gym and sports teams and all that other stuff supports critical thinking? I don't follow you. I would be the last person to say that community isn't important, it's probably the most important thing, other than faculty who know what they're doing. And I say that as someone who attended both a wonderful small residential college and an awful commuter school.

I just don't believe that it needs to be bought at such high prices. There was community and camaraderie among students and faculty long before colleges morphed into whatever it is they have morphed into over the last quarter century. The creation of community is not something that needs to be managed by university bureaucrats. In fact manging it, devalues it. It has, can and could develop just as well without them.

No Eric, you don't NEED those things, but those things are what makes a good education. College is not JUST about learning from the Professors, it is about learning from the other students and the community. It is not just about learning facts, it is about learning to think. The absence of all the things that you would cut out (the housing, the gym, the clinic, the support, the research, the athletics, and the disabled students) makes for a lowsy community where ideas would not flourish and ideas would not be challenged.

People who discuss the cost of college, always and without exception talk about ways to make paying tuition easier. They NEVER talk about ways to cut tuition. Never, ever.

In my view, to have a college you need faculty, a building in which they can meet with students, some laboratories for the sciences, and a library (with the internet, this need is less than it was ten years ago).

You don’ need housing, the students can find apartments on their own; you don’t need student services, the students can find the bars without any help; you don’t need a gym, the local ‘Y’ is cheaper; you don’t need psychological services, the students can go to a community clinic; you don’t need financial aid, tuition is now affordable; you don’t need career services, students can send out their resumes on their own; you don’t need an office of sponsored research, or if you do grant overheads can support it; you don’t need a faculty to help kids who can’t read or write at an appropriate level, community college can do that or maybe these kids should do something else with their lives; you don’t need athletics, the alumni can find something else to cheer about; you don’t need half of the admissions office, let nearly everyone in and then throw out the ones who can’t cut it; and you don’t need layer after layer of administrators since hopefully there will be little left for them to do.

Yet we never talk about this.

So if there is a stick price and a real price, why save in the first place?

For the Assemblywoman:
No one likes the idea of raising CUNY and SUNY tuition rates as it will hurt far more people than it will help, but it IS NOT A TAX on students. That’s nothing but political rhetoric that led to the confederacy of say anything do-nothings that are New York politicians. Is the price of socks a tax on the naked, the cost of food a tax on the hungry, rent a tax on the homeless? No wonder this city’s and the state’s budgets are a mess. Things are already bad enough without the rhetoric.

Can the panelists please discuss the private student loan industry? Student debt is barely being discussed and to the student and often parent co-signers, it's a massive issue.