It must be that season again. The journalistic world is covering all things collegiate, which means that adolescents around the country are deciding where they want to embark on the newest chapter of their life. Once again, Sarah Lawrence is being called out for having the highest tuition in the country. President Karen Lawrence wrote an opinion piece for Inside Higher Ed defending the admittedly high price for a Bachelor’s degree. Her defense was not well met by journalists, and Uri Friedman from The Atlantic Wire presented counter-arguments to Lawrence’s defense. Let me now present my counter-defenses for the school.
Faculty Attention
Friedman cites Outside of Academe’s response to Lawrence’s opinion piece which appears in the comments section:
Do you pay your faculty exceptionally well to compensate for the hours they put in? Do the faculty have a very low teaching load in terms of numbers of classes taught to compensate for the hours they put into each student?
I do not personally know the salary of tenured teaching faculty, however, I can say that, yes, professors do have a very low teaching load in terms of numbers of classes taught. Most professors teach only two courses per semester and devote the rest of their office time to student conferences and donning. Professors are hired on 4-day contracts, meaning that they are on-campus 4 out of every 5 weekdays. Furthermore, professors usually dedicate some of their time at home to reviewing student work1 as well as answering their e-mail. The dedication required of a Sarah Lawrence professor is, without question, a strenuous2 quality to maintain.
To this it should be added that the professors serving the college are all experts in their discipline, and most of them are active in their scholarly communities, which means they are always working on their own writing and research in the background. Giving students immediate access to some of the world’s elite scholars brings a quality of education to campus life that cannot be matched at schools where a student is primarily engaging with a graduate-level teaching assistant.
Customized Education
In this section, Friedman cites Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan’s argument that by placing the onus of curriculum design on the student the college should be able to reduce costs and not increase them. The idea that an eclectic style of curriculum construction should somehow lower costs is ludicrous. By casting the normal academic model to the wind, we, in effect, require a team at the Registrar’s office that can somehow ensure each student’s individual path through the Sarah Lawrence system is properly recorded. Furthermore, just because a student is the one designing the individualized curriculum does not mean that the burden on teaching faculty is in any way lessened. In fact, it takes the teaching community of Sarah Lawrence as a whole to help the students find the proper components to build curriculums they find suitable. This often requires professors to go far beyond their discipline in order to give each student the tools he or she needs when completing conference work, the main factor in the individualized education.
‘Dividends’ After Education
Friedman’s argument against the payoff of a Sarah Lawrence education begins with a discussion of Peter Thiel’s 20 Under 20 program. I will save my response to that for a moment and first address Friedman’s use of data from the website PayScale to construct an argument against a Sarah Lawrence B.A.’s return-on-investment. Friedman acknowledges that PayScale’s report is based on the self-reporting of individual site-members; however, the number of individuals from Sarah Lawrence giving this data is 91. That number accounts for approximately one-third of a graduating class. Now, regardless of the size, PayScale’s methodology in no way produces the random sample required to accurately compare data. This scientifically unfounded argument is not an adequate reflection of what a graduate of the college should expect. Each graduate’s path afterwards is different, and the school encourages students to continue to higher levels of education.
Nolan’s own response to graduates and their market-value is less than flattering. He mocks Lawrence’s list of better-known graduates and takes a jab at Julianna Margulies (’89) as “an actress from The Good Wife.” First, Margulies is the lead actor for CBS’ The Good Wife. Second, Nolan fails to note that Rahm Emanuel (’81) was Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama until stepping down for a successful mayoral bid in Chicago. He further ignores the well known J.J. Abrams (’88) and the journalist and television host Barbara Walters (’51), a household-name. Each member of Lawrence’s list underwent the same challenges at this school that current students are experiencing and evolving from.
But are the tools that SLC provides each student with lucrative in future careers? Of course, but only if a person decides to use them! Each student must embrace the methodology and immerse himself in the laborious system so that he can truly understand and benefit from it. These sacred tools provided in the education are imparted through the conference system. The self-discipline, data synthesis, and mental acumen developed and performed during the creation of these mammoth written works3 is what instills in graduates the ability to go above and beyond the call of duty as if it was second nature.
For this reason, I believe that the “20 Under 20” program’s reason for existing does not at all apply to Sarah Lawrence. When we say “Create your own curriculum,” we don’t mean “I want to take some Deleuze and a little bit of Freud.” The point of conference work is to come up with something original that a student can pour his passion into. The conference system only lives when a student merges her own potential with it. If you say to our Computer Science faculty that you want to write your own social networking application, they don’t look at you like you have an extra head. They ask, “Where do you think you should start?”4 That is the beauty of Sarah Lawrence College. Our faculty is ready to tackle whatever you can dream up and help you turn it into part of your time here.
Yes, the price tag for the college is frightening, but when you take the time to actually use the resources provided to your full-advantage, I have no qualms about saying the education you end up with is “priceless” regardless of how “glib” some may perceive the term!
1 Even reading short papers (5–7 pages) and then writing a half-page commentary on each one for a class of 11 students takes a few weekends at home to accomplish.
2 Although, as I’ve been told, rewarding.
3 At least by undergraduate standards
4 My idea was actually a campus-centric social networking application.