Tuesday, October 07, 2003

What is the world coming to?

The Times describes an "arms race" scenario in the amenities colleges are building to attract students in Jacuzzi U.? A Battle of Perks to Lure Students.

Examples of what is considered over the top perks, but sound pretty damn essential to a fulfilling four year education are:

University of Houston's 53 mil wellness center complete with hot tubs, waterfalls, a five-story climbing wall and pool slides.

The University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh offers massages, pedicures and manicures.

Washington State University boasts the largest Jacuzzi on the West Coast, holding 53 people -- which sounds like an opportunity to contract all sorts of creeping crud.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania has what sounds like the ultimate golf simulator allowing play on any of 52 golf courses from around the world using real balls and clubs.

Penn State has the student center of justice -- "two ballrooms, three art galleries, a movie theater with surround sound and a 200-gallon tropical ecosystem with newts and salamanders. Oh, and a separate 550-gallon salt-water aquarium with a live coral reef."

Then there is Ohio State which has joined the race and will build a 657,000-square-foot complex complete with "kayaks and canoes, indoor batting cages and ropes courses, massages and a climbing wall big enough for 50 students to scale simultaneously."

Two things occurred to me while reading this article. Well, more than two -- but these two are the thoughts I intend to blog.

First, this decadent trend is even impacting my alma mater. Its almost too horrible to grasp, but if construction can remain on schedule through next year -- which is in doubt due to the flooding in Annapolis, the class of 2008 will be the first in the history of the Naval Academy to have air conditioned rooms.

Damn pansies. What is the world coming to?

Second, what with the obesity trends in the US, each generation being larger and larger as we eat too much and move too little... who do these colleges think are going to use the climbing walls, the kayaks, the ice rinks? Or it this part of a non surgical effort to stem the tide of fat?

posted by Bohica at 7:17 AM