Food Fight

This podcast had an incredibly captivating introduction. It started with a chef in the cafeteria at the prestigious private Bowdoin College in Maine. The chef went through what dishes he makes on a normal day and it sounds like a 5 star restaurant’s menu rather than a college. Next, several students are interviewed about the food in the cafeteria and have a lot to say about it. They marvel about the incredible dishes that they have on a regular basis. The podcast then transitions to Vasser College in New York which is also private and prestigious but the students when interviewed about the cafeteria in the college have much different things to say. The students interviewed complain that the food served at the cafeteria is disgusting. One student even recalled finding a staple in their salad. The podcast then reveals why these seemingly similar private colleges have very different quality cafeteria foods. The reason given is that Vassar, the college with the gross food, has limited spending into programs such as the cafeteria in order to accommodate lower income students who are unable to pay the full tuition. Bowdoin, the college with a cafeteria that could be a successful restaurant, does very little to accommodate low income students attending the school and thus have more money to spend on luxuries than Vassar does. Since implementing the financial aid to poor students program, Vassar has taken a hit in funding since they have less students who are paying full tuition. Because of these financial issues, the school has to cut spending on luxury programs to compensate for the students who attend the college with financial aid. Vassar has a dilemma in which their first priority is low income students but because their is less money coming from tuition of the student body. When Vassar limits spending on things such as the cafeteria or dorms, it becomes far less attractive to the students looking at colleges that can afford to pay Vassar’s tuition. The Vice President of Vassar says that cutting faculty and making classes bigger will cause the high academic standards of the college to diminish. For a student looking into colleges to attend who comes from and upper middle class or upper class family, the incredible food at Bowdoin is very attractive to them. They don’t care about the extraordinary financial aid programs at Vassar because they don’t qualify for the programs as they come from a high income household. Bowdoin is one of many colleges in the country who seem to close their doors to low income students in order to cater to high income students with luxury amenities. It is an example of how much the odds are stacked against low income students in America where colleges will cease to give them financial aid since they are unable to pay full tuition in order to satisfy the defined tastes of high income students through useless programs like restaurant quality food and luxury dorms.