Those Spoiled Kids

Private university Seton Hill is going to give each incoming student a MacBook and iPad this fall.

I don’t know about everyone, but this seems a little excessive to me. Perhaps the school has enough money to fulfill all their needs AND get laptops, but in my experience a lot of University administrations have no idea what student priorities are. Are they hoping to attract students with this offer? They probably will. But is this the best thing for students? Obviously, the cost will come out of their tuition. Personally, I’d rather have some cash than an iPad which can only do the same things as my laptop.

The idea of giving all the kids laptops is pretty cool, though. This will save a lot of paper, and hopefully it will save kids money in the long run when they do not have to purchase the always expensive textbooks. But the iPad is unnecessary.

And I guess my biggest problem is that this story really brought back to my attention the HUGE differences between private and public universities. I have attended both now, and so I feel like I can speak from experience. In private school, you buy dozens of new books and you probably already have a laptop. In public school, teachers are afraid to assign more than a couple, kids run to the bookstore to buy the used copies (or buy online), and many are forced to hang out around campus all weekend because they either don’t have a computer at all or they don’t have the software they need.

I realize I can’t blame Seton Hill or their students for societal economic discrepancies, but wouldn’t it be nice in a perfect world if everyone got new (or at least nicely used) books, and a computer (if not a laptop). It seems like if we’re all going to school to learn, we should all have the right tools.

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