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I think a lazy river is a sign that a school is trying too hard to attract students for the wrong reasons. I was looking at the schools with the best pools, an

• rdtsc 9y ago
  If I didn't know any better I'd imagine this would be an article from the Onion. But it makes sense -- parents and students shop for fun activities and extra-curricular clubs and luxury dorms and if one university doesn't have it, they'll just go to another. And it's a shift more towards colleges treating students as pure customers, pool and luxury dorms are not the worst, grade inflation and rising price tags are what's scary. Aside from online colleges and such, wonder if any state schools could move in the opposite direction - cut costs and tuition then aggressively advertise that. Say turn "Luxury Dorm State University" to "Spartan State University" - come here to study and do research only. Not extra-curriculars, no fancy clubs, intro lectures are slightly bigger. Not much admin staff, no 10 different fancy coffee shops or athletic facilities, just a main cafeteria and so on. But you graduate with a $30k debt instead of a $100k one. I guess that becomes a community college almost, and the problem is attracting faculty and research as the perception is the school is not top-tier...