"Cruise ship" higher education

Ryan Craig makes the analogy that some institutions have become "cruise ships" with luxury accommodations, entertainment, and attentive service staff to tend to cruisers' needs. Much like cruise corporations, many colleges have an off-putting sticker price that is often heavily discounted through special promotions. Specific to the ancillary provision of student housing, 10 flagship institutions raised fees by 25% over the last 10 years with some campuses offering "economy" accommodations as low as $9,000 but up to "luxury" levels at almost $25,000 for 30 weeks of the year (these prices are before food). The discounting strategy of cruiselines relies on one important item to make up the difference - alcohol is always full price!

The cruise ship analogy applies to elite higher education to an even greater degree. Mintz describes these institutions as including many students who bring an expectation of privilege that causes them to make unreasonable demands. Specific to causes privileged students advocate, they may not do enough analysis to understand the complexity of the problems about which they complain.

Citing David Foster Wallace's A supposedly fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Craig references some of the most annoying aspects of cruise travel being "'large, fleshy, red, loud, coarse, condescending, self-absorbed, spoiled, appearance-conscious, greedy' American tourists 'waddling into poverty-stricken ports in expensive sandals.'" From an educator's view, the cruise ship experience described here, or any travel for that matter, is even more exasperating when the privilege of travel and/or education is undertaken without a critical learning point of view.

"So let's have colleges offer student serial semesters at sea and begin housing students on cruise ships. Although it won't work as well in Austin or Lawrence, Kan., it's fine with me as long as the new college cruise dorms restrain themselves from trying to make money off students one alcohol at a time," Craig closes in cryptic hyperbole.