From: utzoo!watmath!pcmcgeer
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: How can they do this
Article-I.D.: watmath.3733
Posted: Thu Oct 28 11:10:07 1982
Received: Fri Oct 29 10:13:44 1982
References: vax1.231

	Some minor points:
	First, Kurt is right about the accessibility requirements of private
colleges: there are none.  The social investment in educational accessibility
either for reasons of entitlement or as a method of generating future social
income is provided by the public and land-grant colleges.  Whether this social
investment is a good or bad thing is not relevant to the current discussion.
	Second, the sacrifice a person makes to go to college is mostly foregone
income.  This amounts to roughly $15K/annum.  While I sympathize with those
who find the purchase of a $1/2K - $1K PC a burden, still, it can hardly be
regarded as a major expense when compared with the ~$60K expense a college
education already entails.  This point is reinforced by the fact that an
individual can almost certainly recover part of the cost by selling his PC
after his education has been completed.
	Third, none of us has enough information.  Is it possible that the
administrations of CMU and Drexel were convinced that we would soon all have
to buy PC's anyhow?  If they were, and if they were further able to make a
deal with a manufacturer that their students could obtain PC's on the cheap
through bulk buying, then their action seems very sensible:  their requirement
is nothing more than an attempt to ensure that their students get in on the
ground floor of a coming revolution at a very cheap price.
	If there is a netlink to Drexel or CMU,  I personally would like to
hear from an official there.  A half-hour of his bashing at a terminal
would prvide some needed PR for his institution, and educate all of us.  It
might even win him back a disgruntled alumnus (rabbit!jj, if I'm not mistaken).
					Rick.