Ron DeSantis talks too fast and wears heels. Both these things were apparent during a visit to NHIOP last week. I’m loath to bring up that latter point because this world is exceptionally cruel to short men, but I find such a visual symbol of vanity distasteful for public servants. Like is the case with Biden’s hair plugs and Botox, there is some invisible threshold that separates prudent care for appearance and vainglory, and the Governor of Florida has crossed it. As for the former point, that Ron DeSantis talks too fast, I do not think his much reported on manner is the result of undiagnosed autism or inherent awkwardness, but rather that DeSantis is a Fox News candidate. If you’re unfamiliar with the Fox News’ shtick, every evening, interchangeable hosts will invite guest commentators to appear on their show, where, when prompted by some statement (“what do you think of X’s handling of Y”), the guest will launch into a thirty-second, preplanned ejaculation. If they aren’t impassioned enough, they won’t be invited back, a tacit incentive system that makes intelligent, well-educated men and women into shrill beasts. The guests, seeking to maximize their exposure (these aren’t in-depth interviews, they’re soundbites) will speak quickly and aggressively. Ron DeSantis’ purported inhumanity is nothing more than the speech patterns of someone who has spent hours commentating on Fox News. It makes for a truly unpleasant stump speech: negative, monotone and uninspiring. 

Is the private-college-pricing model ethical? To clarify, although Saint Anselm College participates in what I will call “private pricing,” so does the overwhelming majority of private colleges, and this is not meant as a criticism of SAC. Also, my question is genuine. I do not have a strongly formed opinion about the ethicality of private pricing. So, what is private pricing? It is not third-degree price discrimination. This is when the seller of a good (here, education) can adjust the price of that good to the purchaser of that good. When colleges collect your parents’ income (via FAFSA), they can choose to charge you more (if you’re rich and can afford it) or less (needs-based). This practice could be used to squeeze every penny out of the consumer, but some colleges (like Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, and twenty, mostly top-ranking, others) use their price-discrimination capacity to guarantee students graduate without loans. Price discrimination is its own can of worms.

Rather, what I mean by the private pricing model is the practice of private colleges advertising steep costs but offering sharp discounts to nearly all their students. Sound familiar? I’m basing my numbers on a publicly available audit from 2022 conducted by Grant Thornton. As of 2022, Saint Anselm College has a total net student service revenue of $63,480,982. This number includes tuition, fees, room, and board. It breaks down, assuming 2,000 full-time students, to around $31,000 per student. The Saint Anselm College website advertises tuition, fees, room and board to total around $62,000. In effect, SAC students are paying about half the sticker price. “But wait!” shouts the numerate reader, “That’s the mean cost, not the mode. There might be a bimodal cost distribution, with many students paying next-to-nothing and a similar amount paying full-sticker.” This might be true. However, The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) estimates that 90.2 percent of first-time undergraduates receive an average of 60% off, via institutional grants (2021-22). If this is true, the ½ Off coupon SAC gives to students is actually under industry standards. Wowzah! Generally, more selective schools offer a lower discount. Fun fact: Grant Thornton, the auditing service that conducted SAC’s audit, is a corporate sponsor of NACUBO (ok, it’s not fun, but small world- ain’t it?).

So, is this ethical? The discount private colleges give students isn’t real money; not one dime changes accounts; they’re just giving you a coupon for a product you’d never have paid full price for anyway. They do this as an advertising mechanism. Cost is associated with quality (the $80,000+ club is a real who’s who). Colleges want the prestige of offering a luxury product without the associated drop in demand. This charade doesn’t cost us anything, but it could dissuade low-income and first-generation students from applying to private colleges that they could actually afford. As I said, my question is genuine. I do not know if this is a justifiable business practice or a dishonest abuse.