The Maroon Vol. 2… No. 41 Tuesday, May 31, 2022
“Bringing us all to a place we don't want to lose."
Observer: The Math Of The College Decision
Macky’s New York: Noodle Town
William Peay: Tales From The Wood…
RHS Athletic Hall Of Fame: Save The Date: Nov. 5th 2022
RHS Tired Teens: Later School Start Times
M + A NYC: Mighty Are We As One
James Stroker: Hope Coach
Jim Schoneman: Rock Hound
Siobhan Crann Winograd: Around The Village
Jeff Meyers: The Kid With The Pajama Pants
Observer
The Math Of The College Decision
I appreciate the four year residential Liberal Arts education and the life long advantages it offers to graduates. In my case it obliged students to be far enough away from cities that they can make a day trip if they chose, but keep them in a bucolic setting most of the timewhere they can concentrate on their studies and socializing with people they would come to know for the rest of their lives.
Unfortunately, for some prospective students, the costs of participating in this idlyic sort of education are not adding up anymore. For example, my undergraduate education 45 years ago cost about $40,000 in total. Today that would pay for one semester.
The four year residential Liberal Arts College education, except for those offered by our well-endowed schools like the Ivy League, will soon be a relic. Costs have outrun the prospective student’s ability to borrow money to cover the tuition, room & board. It’s easy to figure out the reasons costs have ballooned. Just look at a campus. Start with the dormitories and then visit the Science facilities. You’ll see facilities that were expensive to refurbish (the dorms for electricity & Internet) and expensive to build (science) when they were new.
Now I don’t wish on anyone my seemingly spartan dormitory with four electrical outlets per double room or science buildings which were twenty years behind the times. I would only suggest what has been long known in academia that the tuition paid by students pursuing a BA pays for the infrastructure of science students pursuing a BS.
The long term trend of College participation is down at all forms of higher education including Community Colleges. All types of higher education organizations will need to do more than ask their alumni for assistance. They have to, the words of Professor Scott Galloway:
become facile with big and small tech to dramatically increase enrollments while lowering costs.
While we are at it, we need a complete re-think on the value of learning a trade when one is young. We’ll have to disavow our elitist prejudices about getting our hands dirty and resolve that this is a pragmatic approach that every young person and their parents ought to examine before going into ruinous debt chasing a degree. I’ve always believed it’s never too late to go to college. Though trades are best learned when you are young and can handle the physical requirements.
I learned a trade in college, that of the restaurateur. I pursued it to its logical conclusion in my thirties and retain my chef training to this day. I then fell back on my excellent education and college connections to join a firm which was building the Internet. It’s not really practical to advocate doing as similar career path the other way around.
Are non-traditional choices even being mentioned as possible career paths? It would be intersting if the Mathematics Department at RHS could devote a day to running the numbers on college & graduate school costs and remind students of how interest on student debt compounds and that it can’t be forgiven by bankruptcy. Might make for a more nimble and realistic generation of students in terms of understanding career choices.
Macky’s New York
Matthew Cortellesi Photography
May 27, 2022 - Snion Square
Noodle Town
I get hungry.
The sun was setting over my shoulder.
The light was almost fake. I shot this into the glass with the sun behind me and my chef in front of me - he made me ginger beef and garlic - yum
Shot on Park Avenue just south of 17th street looking east with westerly reflection.
Time 815pm
#ny1pic
William Peay
Tales From The Wood…
RHS Athletic Hall Of Fame
Save The Date: November 5, 2022
Visit The RHS Athletic Hall Of Fame
Digital Printing for the RHS Hall of Fame provided by Tim Boucher, RHS 1988
RHS Tired Teens
Later School Start Times
M + A NYC
Mighty Are We As One
Inspired by art, designed in New York, and made by hand with love by artisans all over the world. Shop home décor and wearable accessories at www.mplusanyc.com
James Stroker
Hope Coach
Opening day yoga class LBI
Soulmates who gather to breathe focus and reinstate their commitment to be the change as Ghandi says you want to see in the world !
Jim Schoneman
Rock Hound
Ripley Creek
Siobhan Crann Winograd
Around The Village
When both my kids were at GWMS there was a full on lock down (not a drill) during a HSA meeting. Our beautiful lovely librarian switched from a lover of books to a military specialist pulling kids from the hall and crowding a pack of mothers into the corner behind furniture and out of sight lines. For seven minutes we sat on the floor. I held one of Liams friends hands and tried so hard to be quiet while others around me cried. I texted both kids to see where they were in the building and to tell them I love them. I texted Mike my location and I told him I was worried. He texted back he was too and to keep him posted. Lots of I love you texts. It was just seven minutes on that library floor hiding until we moved to a shelter in place. I threw up on the street in front of my grandmothers old apartment when we were finally released into Washington Place one hour later. Seven minutes during a hoax of an incident rattled us all not over fourty minutes with an active shooter who should be a senior student himself. G-d bless Uvalde, all the victims and survivors.
Jeff Meyers
The Kid With The Pajama Pants
The kid with the pajama pants
Emblazoned with corona beer bottles,
The kid who wears the don't tread on me snake flag
Like he's some kind of superhero
Fighting the evil trans movement,
Protesting the all-gender bathroom,
The kid wearing the
"Defund Gun Control" shirt
Going all out on a limb
For what he thinks the second amendment and the death of elementary school children means,
The kid crying in the hallway, moaning
NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME
Then whose missing punch hits the school principal
The kid who comes half an hour late to school everyday
With a signed excuse
The kid who won't ever talk
The kid who can't look you in the eye
The kid with the winter hat on on a summer day
Who makes a feint to slap your laptop out of your hands
Ha ha they laugh,
Keeps walking with his friends,
Down the hallway
The kid who won't do anything in class
The kids who if they can't look at their phones
Every five minutes or so
Sweat bullets
Think school is boring
Think life is boring:
It's our fault
For giving them
And then leaving them with the latest
Technologies all to
Themselves
With no rules, no standards, no elders, no sense of
How we got here...
As if any of us, really, has a clue, anymore