Revisionist History Ep. 5 Food Fight

In the ‘Episode 5: Food Fight’ of the podcast ‘Revisionist History’, Malcolm Gladwell compares two similar schools, Bowdoin College and Vassar College. They are both small elite liberal arts colleges with similar tuition fees and Vassar is a little bigger and edgier than Bowdoin. The major difference between these schools is the quality of the food. Bowdoin College has wonderful food, which are handmade, delicious, and diverse. Sometimes there are lobsters in the menu and the students are highly satisfied with it. Vassar’s food is terrible and almost inedible. Where did this difference come from? After Princeton dramatically expanded its financial aid, Vassar realized that low-income children spend almost a half of their families’ income to pay for the tuition and expanded its aid from 15 thousand to 60 thousand, 10 years ago. As a result, full tuition paying students that were about 75-80% of the total number of students were replaced by about 100 poor students. Obviously, Vassar has no cushion or wiggle room.

 Malcolm Gladwell suggests two solutions about this financial shortage. First, Vassar College can get smaller. However, this defeats the purpose of providing good education to more poor children. Also since colleges are subsidized by the citizens, they have the responsibility to give back and provide more benefits to the society. Second, Vassar can cut back on faculty. This also defeats the purpose. Vassar experiment is to give all students from diverse backgrounds best education. Vassar has only one choice: they just have to tie their belt tighter. The biggest difficulty is that they have to hold full tuition students, who are attracted to good housing and food, so that the school can aid poor students. Gladwell wraps up his discussion by saying ‘Don’t go or pay for colleges like Bowdoin. Don’t vote for colleges that spend money on food.’

When we talked about this podcast in class, I was astonished by other students’ thoughts. Some said that good quality food is essential for studying, so Vassar’s choice might not be the best. I understood that they didn’t mean this in an aggressive way but I thought that we should consider this problem more seriously. Since students of KMLA are mostly from above-average-income families, we can’t really empathize this situation. But if we think it in the shoes of low-income students, an opportunity of education is worth sacrificing good quality food. Therefore, I entirely agree that more opportunity of education is prior to good food and that Vassar is making the best choice they can.

Another student in class said, “I just don’t understand why I have to go to a school that uses my tuition, not for my benefit but for financial aids.” I agree that it is unrealistic to urge high-income students, or full tuition students, to not go to colleges with good food, since they are not offering fair education as Malcolm Gladwell says. If the quality of education and tuition is same and only housing and food is different, it’s just not rational to pick Vassar over Bowdoin since as an individual, we would choose the school where we can get most from the same tuition. However, I was astounded by that comment since I believe that we should consider the privileges given to us as a responsibility. These privileges are sheer luck and it could have been given to anybody. It’s not like we’ve been ‘selected’. We were just lucky to be randomly picked. So, it is our duty to return these benefits back to the society.

How can we solve this? Gladwell suggests many solutions but rebuts it right away. The most complicated problem is that the schools have the provide good education to as many low-income students while bringing full tuition students who could pay for the financial aid. In my opinion, the government should subsidize colleges which offers opportunities and supports low-income students. As an individual, we should return our privileges by donating and offering charities to school that really need it.

After the discussion, our teacher said that we must not only support low-income students financially, but also must help them adapt to the education environment and this inspired me greatly. For example, my school, KMLA offered scholarship to local students since Hoengseong, where KMLA locates, is region with less opportunities of good education. However, the local students soon left the school because it wasn’t easy to adapt to the new educational atmosphere that was very different from ordinary schools and to match other students who attended private institutes and received intensive education from a very young age. The school was too irresponsible to throw an innocent student among the jungle without any help. The school should have provided the students with more intensive care and attention and tutoring programs to help them adapt to the school, both in daily life and academics.

This podcast reminded me of one time when I felt discouraged by my economic status even though I am not a low-income student and have received overwhelming privileges. One day, we were looking at the past college acceptance records of our alumni. I said, “Wow, this alumnus went to Yale but didn’t receive any financial aid!” One student in our class replied, “If I could get into Yale, the financial aid doesn’t matter at all.” Then, I had to say, “Well, I can’t afford to.”

There are so many children that are talented as students of HYPS but just can’t afford the fees. It is the responsibility of the privileged people to give them fair opportunities regardless of their income.