Yesterday Florence and I atttended the one-day summer orientation at UCSC. It seems like a very good fit for her, even though I can't stop thinking it's too far away and too costly. I actually let those opinions slip yesterday. She'd never divided out the cost of tuition by the number of courses, etc, and was upset by the result. It's not news to her parents, though. Arthur once had a student come up to him and say that he didn't think he'd gotten his 35 dollars worth from that particular hour of class. Cheeky, but interesting. People don't usually meter the whole gestalt of a university experience in cost per hour, but when you do, it can be startling. Way cheaper by hour than plumbers or dentists, though.
During the welcome talk and a couple of times during panels and info sessions during the day, we (parents) kept being congratulated on doing a good job in producing such high quality students, and being reminded that they'd continue to need our support and advice. It mostly made me think of the ongoing problem for foster children who want to attend college. Most states dump the kids out of their care after age 18 (or maybe high school graduation), so not only would they need total scholarship money, they don't have simple things like a place to go home to during school holiday breaks. There is a movement in some states to have the state university systems offer free dorm housing to such students during breaks and help them in other ways, but it really is true that the safety net gets harshly withdrawn from foster children when they're not legally kids any more. UC Santa Cruz actually has a program to deal with this,
http://www.youthtoday.org/youthtoday/July05/story4_7_05.htmlbut there is a long way to go.
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