Son of Student Aid Services

NOW the truth comes out. Harvard University is maybe possibly cooperating, colluding, conspiring, and concealing with 20 or 30 other Reputable Institutions of Higher Learning to raise our tuition rates.

Of course I'm shocked. I always believed that the University (which was in my mind sort of an earth mother figure) had my best interests at heart. If it asked me for $20,000 a year, well, it was only because that money was absolutely necessary to send the American History Department to France to do research every year.

And now I find out that Harvard is maybe possibly (I know! Nothing's been proved yet! Please don't sue me!) no better than Ivan Boesky, except that President Bok has a nice, all-American name like "Derek."

Well, I'm not going to take this discovery lying down. No siree, bob. And Bob's not going to take it lying down either. We're going to strike back where it hurts. No, we're not going to sue. Another suit would just clog our overburdened judicial system. which I would hate to do, except for a few members of our judicial system whom I'd like to clog right in the mouth.

Bob and I have decided instead to form our own corporation: Student Aid Services II: The Revenge.

WE figure that if colleges have the right to exchange information about prospective students, then prospective students ought to have the right to exchange information about colleges.

For a modest fee, a prospective college student can contact our headquarters (which will be my room, although we will not in any way be affiliated with the University, Really.) and obtain the real dirt on the colleges they're applying to. Then everything will be fair. Colleges can decide how much to charge students. and students can decide whether or not the colleges are worth it.

Bob and I will handle the Harvard angle, even though we wouldn't dream of using of our positions as students for personal profit. We'll tell the truth about:

Reading Period: While all of your friends are spending their January sleeping, you will be back at school. Locked in your room. Studying, Sometimes you will write papers, but mostly you will study. When you sleep, you will feel guilty because you ought to be studying. When you eat, you will feel guilty because you ought to be studying. When you breathe, you will feel guilty because you ought to be studying. Enjoy it. This is how you spend a quarter of your school year.

Faculty Leaves: At any given moment, at least half of the important, tenured professors whose names brought you to Harvard will be on a leave of absence. The other half will be too busy writing books or fundraising to teach classes. The people who teach your classes do not have tenure. That is why they don't take leaves of absence. If they are good at teaching your classes, They will never get tenure, because they are too busy teaching classes to write the books that get them tenured. But not to worry. You will buy a lot of books by tenured professors.

The Course Catalog: The most entertaining work of fiction produced by this university. All of the classes in brackets (that is, at least half of them) are classes that professors imagine that they will want to teach next year when they return from their leaves of absence. But next year is a long way away. By next year, they will have decided only to teach a 15-person seminar for graduate students. so that they will have enough time to write their books (see above). Every year undergraduates play along with the professors by filing a Plan of Study, which is an imaginary schedule of fictional classes that the student wishes he or she could take.

Shopping Period: A week during which you have to attend at least 20 different classes because none of the ones you put down on your plan of Study exist.

OF course this is only a start. Combined with information from students all over the country, we will eventually manipulate the admissions decisions of every senior in high school.

But this won't be an anti-trust violation, Really. And if the Justice Department investigators start whining about technicalities, we'll do what any self-respecting Harvard administrator who denies all wrongdoing would do.

We'll resign.