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Food Fight · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: The first week I arrived, I was met at the
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: back door by local folks who were bringing in flats
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: of blueberries, and it was just it was remarkable.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: That's Ken Cardon speaking. He's the executive chef at Bowden
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: College in Maine. In the world of American colleges, Chef
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Cardon's food holds a special place.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: So you've consistently make the top nomber one spot on
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: the lists of best college food. What are a couple
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: of things that you think sets Boden apart?
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And that's Jacob Smith, one of my producers. He went
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: up to Maine for Revisionist History's first culinary investigation.
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: Can you just describe what we're looking at? Here?
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Directly below us is a salad bar, and you'll notice
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: in the center of the salad bar there's several prepared salads, entrees, salads,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: and then you have your make your own areas. To
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: the right and left, there's homemade soups in vegan options,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: there's fresh fruits and desserts, and then you'll see there's
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: condiments and toppings, and we actually make our own peanut
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: butter and bake our own breads, and that's all available
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: at every meal.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: My guess is your college wasn't like this. Mine certainly wasn't.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: And as you can see, we always have a vegan
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: and vegetarian item for our hot soups, and today a
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: favorite for launch is a hot turkey sandwich in arizo
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: and tofu salad.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I worked in my college cafeteria as an undergrad, and
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: just remembering that fact now is bringing the smell of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the dining hall wafting back grease, disinfectant, aging, mayonnaise, cold
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: fried eggs, all in some horrible combination that was the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. I don't think that anyone properly understood back
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: then how crucial healthy eating was to a positive learning environment.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Bodin is in a whole different class like Paradise.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: The deli special today is a smashed chickpea, avocado and
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: pesto sandwich, and we have a faro salad with aspiragus
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: and parmesan.
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: Cool. So can we take a look at the kitchen?
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: Are we able to go back there?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: As you can see if you look down right here
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: at at this area, we're preparing fresh rosemary is one
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: of the ingredients in tonight's dinner, and they're cutting chicken,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: so everything really is done from scratch.
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: It has that for us, all.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Touch, fresh rosemary and the personal touch. But here's what
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about. The food at Bowden is
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: actually a problem, a moral problem. I don't mean this
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: in any way as a criticism of people like Ken Cardon.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: He's very, very good at what he does. Jacob, my producer,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: is a massive foodie and he was impressed. It takes
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: a lot to impress Jacob. Not do I mean that
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: people students in particular shouldn't eat properly. They should. The
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: point is at every choice we make, even if it's
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the right choice at that moment, has larger consequences, some
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: of them unexpected and paradoxical, and Ken Cardon's amazing food
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: is one of those things. My name is Malcolm Glauwell.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Revisionist History, my podcast about things forgotten or misunderstood.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: This is actually episode two of a little three part
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: mini series I've dropped into the middle of Revisionist History.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: It's a re examination of one of the most fundamental
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: ideas in American life that if you have some ability
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: and work hard, you can make it to the top.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: The episode before this was about a kid named Carlos,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: a brilliant kid, and just how many obstacles stand in
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: the way of his making it out of south central
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles. This episode is about what it takes for
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: a poor kid to get a good college degree, and
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: strange as it may sound, campus food at a place
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: like Bowden is a big part of that problem. The
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: best way to understand this is to compare Boden with
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: one of its competitors, Vassar College. Vassar is in Poughkeepsie,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: just north of New York City. It's a lot like
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Boden in many ways. They're both small, elite Northeastern Liberal
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: arts colleges. Lots of students apply to both schools. They're
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: in the same category, but there are also some differences.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Vassar is a little bigger and edgier, a lot more
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: dyed hair and tattoos. Boden is smaller and preppier. Boden
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: also has more money, not a lot more, but enough
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: that it matters. And then there's the issue of food.
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: How's the food at Vassar? What you say, food? It
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: could be better, you know, there's always room for improvement.
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: The Saldar always makes me kind of sad like one
• 4:58
  Speaker 5: time I was eating like a spinach kale stirfry that
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: was prepared and I may or may not have found
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: like an industrial size staple in it.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: The president of Vassar College is a woman named Catherine Hill.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: She's an economist by training. Tall, gracious, distinguished, a touch
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of gray, what you would expect from an academic leader.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: We met in her office on the Vassar campus, which
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: is full of lots of Gothic greystone buildings and creaky
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: oak staircases, huge double sash windows, ancient rugs, all very
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Before she was at Vassar, Catherine Hill was
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: at Williams College, about two hours north of Poughkeepsie. She
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: was the provost. While she was there, Princeton dramatically expanded
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: its financial aid, and suddenly every liberal arts college in
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: the country felt it had to examine its policies as well.
• 5:51
  Speaker 6: So we had to figure out what we were going
• 5:52
  Speaker 6: to do in response to Princeton announcing that they were
• 5:56
  Speaker 6: going to move away from loans.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: So Hill teams up with another economist and starts digging
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: around in the data from the admissions office.
• 6:03
  Speaker 6: A colleague of mine, Gordon Winston, and I asked the question,
• 6:06
  Speaker 6: do we know what we're actually asking families to pay
• 6:09
  Speaker 6: to come to Williams. So we'd always assumed that we
• 6:11
  Speaker 6: were doing just, you know, a great job with talented
• 6:15
  Speaker 6: kids from all different economic backgrounds. And what we found
• 6:18
  Speaker 6: out was that we were asking students from lower income
• 6:22
  Speaker 6: quintils to pay an awfully high share of their family
• 6:24
  Speaker 6: income to come to attend. And we were also finding
• 6:27
  Speaker 6: out that we weren't getting many, not surprisingly, you know,
• 6:30
  Speaker 6: I think we were finding that we were asking families
• 6:33
  Speaker 6: in the bottom forty percent of the income distribution to
• 6:35
  Speaker 6: pay about fifty percent of their family incomes free tax.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: He'll saying that at that time, if the family of
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: a poor, smart kid wanted their child to go to Williams,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: that have to spend half their income on tuition half.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: That's why there were so few poor kids at Williams.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: So while she's at Williams, the school starts making its
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: financial aid a lot more generous, then He'll becomes president
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: of Vassar.
• 6:59
  Speaker 6: Vasser was an institution that was committed to these kinds
• 7:01
  Speaker 6: of issues, and when we looked at the actual data,
• 7:05
  Speaker 6: it turned out that compared to some of our peer
• 7:07
  Speaker 6: schools we, in fact, weren't all that either in terms
• 7:10
  Speaker 6: of socioeconomic diversity or racial diversity.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: So she decides to change Vassar's priorities. Students from the
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: poorest families in the United States get a small five
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars grand from the federal government called a pel grant.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Hill decides she wants to accept way more pel grant
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: students Advassor. So, what are you spending on financially?
• 7:28
  Speaker 6: We're spending about sixty million dollars sixty million. Yeah, and
• 7:31
  Speaker 6: when I started to know six it was about twenty
• 7:33
  Speaker 6: five million. I see. So it's basically it's about double.
• 7:37
  Speaker 6: And we have about twenty three percent pell grant recipients,
• 7:41
  Speaker 6: which makes us, I think, the highest amongst a very
• 7:44
  Speaker 6: large group of schools and the lowest income.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Kids and pale. When you started, what was was it?
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I think I read eleven percent when you started.
• 7:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, I'm not I'm not even sure we
• 7:54
  Speaker 6: were tracking it, but it was in the low teens.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: That was ten years ago. Since then, Hill has discovered
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: two things. The first is exactly what we talked about
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: in the last episode. There's a ton of smart, poor
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: kids out there. You can easily double the number that
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: you accepted a school like Vassar and not compromise your
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: academic standards. Okay, that's the first thing, the good news.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Then there's the bad news.
• 8:18
  Speaker 6: I think a lot of school said, okay, so yeah,
• 8:22
  Speaker 6: they're out there, let's see if we can find some
• 8:25
  Speaker 6: and recruit more. I think over time, I've come to
• 8:28
  Speaker 6: realize that the main constraint, despite commitments on the parts
• 8:32
  Speaker 6: of schools to do this, the reality is is if
• 8:35
  Speaker 6: you take a talented, low income kid, you've got to
• 8:38
  Speaker 6: offer significantly more financial aid. And every dollar that you
• 8:41
  Speaker 6: spend on financial aid is a dollar that you don't
• 8:44
  Speaker 6: have to spend on something else, and that is ultimately
• 8:47
  Speaker 6: the real challenge.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Tuition at Vassar including room and board is sixty two
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year. You let in some poor kid
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: for free, you're out somewhin range of sixty two thousand dollars.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: Give me an.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Example of the kind of trade offs you've had to
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: deal with because you wanted to increase your financial aid package.
• 9:05
  Speaker 6: It would be spending more to renovate old dormitories and bathrooms.
• 9:12
  Speaker 6: It would be better food in the dining hall. You know,
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: many of those things are really good things, and you're
• 9:18
  Speaker 6: always making trade offs.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah in the margin, did you catch that better food
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: in the dining hall? Right after my producer Jacob went
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: to Bowden to check out their food, he went to Vassar.
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: How often do you eat there?
• 9:35
  Speaker 7: About twice a day?
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Jacob is talking to a sophomore advassor named Amanda.
• 9:40
  Speaker 7: So, lunch and dinner usually I do like a quick
• 9:44
  Speaker 7: breakfast in the dinner because breakfast is notoriously their best meal.
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: And what about dinner? What's dinner look like?
• 9:51
  Speaker 7: Pretty terrifying? Sometimes it's weird. It oscillates between Sometimes they
• 9:55
  Speaker 7: have really good ethnic food. Actually they'll surprisingly put together
• 9:58
  Speaker 7: a very good meal, and then there's other nights where
• 10:00
  Speaker 7: you get there and it's kind of like pasta very sad,
• 10:04
  Speaker 7: like neat sandwich thing you're not really sure about, and
• 10:07
  Speaker 7: like pizza, usually end.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: Up with soup that night.
• 10:12
  Speaker 8: It's yeah, what.
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: Would you say?
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Like The most common complaints about the food from students.
• 10:21
  Speaker 7: Usually lack of variety of taste. Also, some people it's
• 10:25
  Speaker 7: kind of gross to talk about, but like claim it
• 10:27
  Speaker 7: really gives them indigestion, Like they're not happy with the
• 10:29
  Speaker 7: quality of.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: The food by indingestion. Do you mean it has like
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: a laxative effect? Is that the complaint because I've heard
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: that elsewhere.
• 10:37
  Speaker 7: Yeah, that's one hundred percent what I'm talking about.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: If you could step in and make like sweeping changes
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: to dining at vast or what would you change.
• 10:50
  Speaker 7: Sweeping changes? I mean my thing is like, I know,
• 10:52
  Speaker 7: I'm kind of spoiled because I'm from California, so I'm
• 10:54
  Speaker 7: used to just a higher quality of food in general,
• 10:56
  Speaker 7: because like the soudbar always makes me kind of sad,
• 10:58
  Speaker 7: like or like the nights where they're like we have
• 11:01
  Speaker 7: guacamolan and it's like literally just like this pasty disgusting,
• 11:04
  Speaker 7: like just you know, they obviously just purade some like
• 11:07
  Speaker 7: unripe avocados.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Vassar has terrible food. Boden practically has a Michelin star.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Two otherwise almost identical schools that, on this one measure
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: couldn't be more different, and why because Boden doesn't spend
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: nearly as much on financial aid as Vassar does. Now,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: I don't want to single out Boden as some kind
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: of moral villain. There are lots of private colleges in
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: the US that do a far worse job than Boden
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: at educating low income students. But just listen to these numbers.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Twenty three percent of Vassar's undergraduates are on pelgrants. That is,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: they come from the poorest part of American society. At Boden,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: just thirteen percent of students are on pelgrants, so just
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: over half as many as at Vassar. The New York
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Times does something called an Access Index, which measures how
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: good a job a college does at opening its doors
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: to low income students. The way the index works, an
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: average score is one. If you do better than average,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: your score is greater than one. Among all American universities
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: and colleges measured, Vassar comes in eighth with a score
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: of one point three six, behind only the University of
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Florida and the big schools in the University of California system,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: it is the most open and accessible private school in
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: the land. Boden is fifty first at one point zero five,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: just above average. If you want an example of a
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: school that does really badly in the New York Times Index,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: New York University NYU is a point six y five,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: which ranks it one hundred and fifty six, which is appalling. Now,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: why does this matter? We don't want all schools to
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: be the same. What's wrong with a system where one
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: school spends its marginal dollar on gathering the most interesting
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: and diverse group of undergraduates possible, and then another school
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: spends its marginal dollar on artisanal cheese. It shouldn't matter, right,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: But if you dig into the way the university system
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: works in the United States, you discover that it matters
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: a lot. Boden and Vassar are connected. I'm back at Vassar.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a small conference room in the main
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: administration building. In front of me is Robert Walton, Vassar's
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: vice president of finance. Vasser might be the home of
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the edgy and the tattooed, but that's not Robert Walton.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: He's a numbers guy, white hair, carefully trim beard. He's
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: got the school's budget open in front of him.
• 13:44
  Speaker 8: So if we look at our total budget sort of
• 13:47
  Speaker 8: what we actually spend, it's about one hundred and sirventy
• 13:49
  Speaker 8: five million dollars. And if you think about it in
• 13:52
  Speaker 8: just big groups, about two thirds of that are fees
• 13:56
  Speaker 8: that we collect from different sources, and about a one
• 13:59
  Speaker 8: third of that budget comes from the endowment.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, now the tuition bucket. How does that break down?
• 14:07
  Speaker 8: You know, we are like many schools like we have
• 14:09
  Speaker 8: sort of a barbell effect. That's a slightly inelegant metaphor,
• 14:14
  Speaker 8: but it works. We tend to have a grouping at
• 14:17
  Speaker 8: each end, those who have a full ability to pay
• 14:20
  Speaker 8: and those who have low ability to pay.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: The math looks like this. There are two four hundred
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: and fifty undergraduates Advassor. A thousand of them are on
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the wealthy end of the barbell. They pay full tuition
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: or close to it. That comes to sixty million dollars
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: a year in revenue. The rest of the students at
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: the other end of the barbell pay about half that much.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: They're the ones receiving some kind of financial aid. There's
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: way more of them, but they contribute much less to
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the bottom line. So Vassor makes up for that lost
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: revenue with money drawn from the endowment. I've grossly simplified
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: matters to the point where if Robert Walton hears this,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: he'll cringe. But that's basically how the finances at Vassor work.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: A couple of questions before you went, you made this shift,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: which was what roughly ten.
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: Years ago, roughly two thousand and seven. It happened mid
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: year sort of so so hard.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: That's Marian Begemann, Vassar's head of strategic planning. She's sitting
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: next to Walton formal business suit. What would your percentage
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: of full pay have been back then? In the earlier era, roughly.
• 15:24
  Speaker 7: We were around eighty, no, seventy five to eighty let's.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Say, seventy five to eighty percent of students paid full
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: tuition back then. This is an important point. The Barbelle
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: used to be heavily weighted on the high full paying
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: end and have almost nothing on the other end. When
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: President Hill transforms Vassar a decade ago, she basically switches that.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: She replaces hundreds of full paying students with students who
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: pay very little. As a result, Vassar goes from a
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: place that quite comfortably supported itself on tuition revenue to
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: a place that has to rely really heavily on its
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: endowment to make the numbers work. Now, Vassar is wealthy
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: enough to pull that off. It all adds up, but barely.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: They have no wiggle room. So the one thousand kids
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: who pay full tuition Vasser needs every single one. Without them,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: everything falls apart financially. I asked Walton, what would happen
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: if the number of full paying students dropped? If even
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: fifty of that one thousand went elsewhere.
• 16:25
  Speaker 8: That would be bad. That would be bad.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: No wiggle room. Okay, now about the endowment once again.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Boden College is a good comparison. Boden starts twenty fifteen
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: with an endowment of one point four billion dollars. They
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: make a healthy return on that, which they divide up.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: A quarter of it goes to pay for financial aid,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: three quarters of it goes back into the endowment. That
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: three quarters incidentally comes to one hundred and twenty million dollars.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: So to put it another way, Boden had one hundred
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: and twenty million dollar cushion last year. What I've just
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: described explains how endowments et elite universities keep getting bigger
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and bigger. They earn way more on their endowment every
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: year than they need to balance the books. This is
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: a bit of an aside, but here's a really extreme
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: example of the endowment cushion. Princeton. They start twenty fourteen
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: with twenty point six billion dollars in the bank. Let
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: me repeat that, twenty point six billion dollars in the bank.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: They make two point one billion on their investments over
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the course of the year. After they've covered their costs
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: and paid for all their financial aid, they had seven
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: hundred million dollars left over, and after you add in
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: all the other money they raised, Princeton ends the year
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: with an endowment of twenty two point seven billion dollars.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Princeton is a perpetual motion cash machine. There is literally
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: no way they can ever run out of money. If
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: they wanted to build a half a billion dollar dormitory
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: with marble staircases, mahogany floors, and solid gold bathroom fixtures,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: they could pay for it aut of petty cash and
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: still bank two hundred million dollars. That's wiggle room. By
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the way, given that fact, you might wonder why anyone
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: would ever give money to Princeton. Good question. I have
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: way more to say about this subject. That's what next
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: week's episode is about. But let's go back to Vassar.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Things are a lot more complicated there. They have about
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: a billion dollars in their endowment. That's less than Boden,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: but for Vassor. To cover their expenses, they need to
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: take out significantly more from their endowment than Boden does,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: so they don't have the same kind of cushion. Last year,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: In fact, Vassar had a bad year and they ended
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: up withdrawing more than they earned. You can't keep doing
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: that year in and year out and survive as an institution.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: No wiggle room. So what are Vassor's other options. Well,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: they could get smaller. One of the reasons Boden is
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: in such better shape is that Boden has a only
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: eighteen hundred students. Vassar is more than a third larger.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: If Vasser were boded in size, then suddenly they have
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: six hundred and fifty fewer students to subsidize with their endowment.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: If I said to you, completely hypothetically, I want you
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: to run this college in such a way as to
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: maximize the amount of financial resources available, would you shrink
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the student body?
• 19:33
  Speaker 8: In a perfect world, that would be the technique I
• 19:36
  Speaker 8: would prefer.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: That's Vassar's VP Robert Walton. Again Note that he says
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: in a perfect world, but of course that's the last
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: thing Vasser would ever do. It would be totally self defeating.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: The whole point of Catherine Hill's transformation of Vasser was
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to try and educate as many poor smart kids as possible,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: because America has a huge problem with not providing opportunity
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: for poor smart kids. If you cut six hundred and
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: fifty spots, then you're part of the problem.
• 20:03
  Speaker 8: Again, I'm a fiscal conservative, but she's convinced me. We
• 20:08
  Speaker 8: don't pay any taxes in terms of to the fads
• 20:11
  Speaker 8: of the states, so we are a tax subsidized entity.
• 20:15
  Speaker 8: So one would logically conclude then if you have a
• 20:19
  Speaker 8: large endowment, you really have an obligation to provide a
• 20:21
  Speaker 8: public good, not just to educate the rich.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: This is something people always forget. Universities don't pay taxes.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: We subsidize them. You and I. When Princeton makes that
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: two point four billion dollars return on their endowment, they
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: don't pay a dime of capital gains taxes on it.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: And Walton's pointing out something really really crucial, which is
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: that if you get that kind of subsidy from society,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to give back. Cutting six hundred and fifty
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: spots is not giving back. All right, how about this
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: cut back on faculty, bigger classes. No no, no, that
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: also defeats the purpose. The whole point of the Vasser
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: experiment is to give students of all backgrounds the best
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: possible education. If you make the education worse in order
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: to pay for the students who need a good education,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: then you're right back where you started from. The point
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: of Vasser is that the best education comes when you
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: mix students from all backgrounds. When the child of an
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: investment banker sits in class next to the child of
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: a janitor, the two of them have a learning experience
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: that they could not have amongst people just like themselves.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: That's what they're trying to protect. So what do you
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: do if you're Vassar and you're trying to protect that
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: idea of what an education is. You have only one option.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: You tighten your belt as tight as you can. You
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: don't do anything extravagant.
• 21:48
  Speaker 8: I worked with a college at one time, it was
• 21:50
  Speaker 8: sure going name that opened a new residence hall in
• 21:53
  Speaker 8: the last five years that was all singles that had
• 21:56
  Speaker 8: double beds.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Basically, the dorm was a high end hotel.
• 22:01
  Speaker 8: You know, there are these amenities that some schools do
• 22:03
  Speaker 8: that are just kind of crazy and over the top.
• 22:05
  Speaker 8: But they do all kinds of things. You know, they
• 22:08
  Speaker 8: have more money for speaker series than we do. We
• 22:12
  Speaker 8: can't pay Bill Clinton to come and speak for three
• 22:14
  Speaker 8: hundred thousand that more. Prior institution did things like that.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton the ultimate college amenity. The problem with belt tightening, though,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: is attracting those one thousand full pay students, the ones
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: whose money Vassar desperately needs. Who are they They're the
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: children of professionals, upper middle class and upper class Manhattan,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Beverly Hills, Boston, San Francisco. They grew up privileged. They
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: have certain expectations about lifestyle. Those amenities that Bob Walton
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: says are kind of crazy and over the top. That's
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: what these kids are used to. So this is what
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: keeps Catherine Hill up at night. How can she keep
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: those wealthy kids coming to Vassar if she can't provide
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: them with the lifestyle that they're used to.
• 22:59
  Speaker 6: We are operating in an economy right now where income
• 23:03
  Speaker 6: and equality has increased over the last thirty to forty years,
• 23:06
  Speaker 6: So we are looking to attract talented students from high
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: income families. These are kids who have grown up with
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: their own bedroom and their own bathroom and when they
• 23:17
  Speaker 6: come looking at college campuses, those are some of the
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: things that the families are looking for.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Rasser asks those kids to do without some of the
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: luxuries they were raised with, and that's a hard sell.
• 23:31
  Speaker 6: Every time another school with which we compete makes a
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: different decision and doesn't spend it on financial aid, then
• 23:37
  Speaker 6: it puts us in the position of being in a
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: tougher position to compete for the full pay students.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. You mean if another school spends lesson
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: builds a fancier X and you don't have the fancy X.
• 23:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah, then they're gonna take some of those kids away
• 23:57
  Speaker 6: from us who want the fancy X.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Hill didn't name any names, but you know who she's
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: talking about. She's talking about Boden and the kids she
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: worries that Boden will take away are the kids from
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Beverly Hills in Manhattan who grew up on beautifully ripe
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: avocados and freshly cut rosemary. Robert Walton serves on something
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: called the Parents Advisory Committee at Vassar, which is basically
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the parents of the rich kids, and he hears it
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: all the time.
• 24:25
  Speaker 8: They come and that you know they want to talk
• 24:27
  Speaker 8: to the senior officers about you know, their observations. You know,
• 24:30
  Speaker 8: it's sort of a you know, tough love kind of meeting.
• 24:33
  Speaker 8: They always ask about food, They always ask about housing,
• 24:36
  Speaker 8: They always you.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Know, they what do they say when they bring up food?
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Do they complain about food or that?
• 24:41
  Speaker 8: Basically, and so my reaction is, we need to make
• 24:44
  Speaker 8: food better. And we actually aren't going to make food better.
• 24:46
  Speaker 8: But if food is really important to you, and if
• 24:48
  Speaker 8: housing is really important to you, don't come to vasser
• 24:51
  Speaker 8: That's not what we focus on. That's just not what
• 24:53
  Speaker 8: we're into. Yeah, that's you know, and no apologies for that.
• 24:57
  Speaker 8: I mean, that's just not what we do.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: This is why I said at the beginning that food
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: is actually a moral issue, because how long do you
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: think Vassar can continue to do this, to say to
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: parents and students, if food is really that important to you,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: go somewhere else. Those kids come to Vassar for a
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: campus visit and eat a soggy piece of pizza. Then
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: they go to Boden where Chef Cardone is the god
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: of the dining hall. He's got amazing resources, a bigger
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: endowmented six hundred and fifty fewer students, half as many
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: kids on pelgrants and every day he's taking it up
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: a notch in a kitchen. How long can Soggi pizza
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: hold up against Ken Cardon. When my producer Jacob was
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: on his culinary investigation at Boden, the students talked about
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the food of their school like they were in Paris.
• 25:57
  Speaker 9: In the beginning of the year. That ice cream didn't
• 25:59
  Speaker 9: really taste that well, like it was like kind of watery,
• 26:02
  Speaker 9: and so I know someone wrote a complaint card, like guys,
• 26:05
  Speaker 9: and then now it's like so much better, like they
• 26:07
  Speaker 9: just fixed it.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: I've heard good things about the dessert. Is it good?
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: How do you compete with this?
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: On your first time campus?
• 26:14
  Speaker 10: There's this lobster bake where every student on campus has
• 26:18
  Speaker 10: the choice of having a lobster for dinner or a
• 26:19
  Speaker 10: steak or a vegetarian option. It's really phenomenal.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: If I like to ask you, maybe like a respective
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: student was coming to campus and they were asked about
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: the food, what would be your like your one sentence
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: pitch or how would you describe it?
• 26:33
  Speaker 10: It's sort of indescribable in the way that you can't
• 26:35
  Speaker 10: explain to someone how it's always changing, and it's always fresh,
• 26:38
  Speaker 10: and it's always different. It pushes you to try new things,
• 26:41
  Speaker 10: which is I think what college is all about, which
• 26:42
  Speaker 10: is experimenting and reaching out to new worlds. And you
• 26:45
  Speaker 10: know the fact that the food here helps you do
• 26:47
  Speaker 10: that as well is incredible.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I cannot get over how excited this kid is about
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the food of bud. Do you think he talks this
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: way about his professors?
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Oh if you tried things that like you wouldn't have
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: tried otherwise, Like what kind of meals or dishes?
• 27:02
  Speaker 10: Oh wow, the other night had an egg plant parmesan pancake.
• 27:06
  Speaker 10: You know, I don't think I could have even told
• 27:08
  Speaker 10: you that was a real thing until I had it.
• 27:10
  Speaker 10: You know, I walked past it didn't travel, and I
• 27:12
  Speaker 10: went like the might as well, and it was phenomenon.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I have sex, actually eggplant parmerson pancake. I mean, this
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: is completely absurd. This is everything that's wrong with American colleges.
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: We had venison here during deer season.
• 27:27
  Speaker 10: It was really just fresh, locally sourced, different kinds of
• 27:29
  Speaker 10: meats that I would never expect to see in a
• 27:31
  Speaker 10: college dining hall.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: There's only one solution. If you're looking at liberal arts colleges.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Don't go to Boden. Don't let your kids go to Boden.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Don't let your friends go to Boden. Don't give money
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: to Boden or to any other school that serves amazing
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: food in its dining home. Because every time you support
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: a school that spends its money on amazing food, every
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: time you cast a vote in favor of eggplant parmesan
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: pancakes and lobster bakes and venison during deer season, you're
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: making it harder and harder for someone like Catherine Hill
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: to create opportunities for poor kids. Suck it up and
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: go to Vassar. Send a message to the Bodons of
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the world about what really matters.
• 28:15
  Speaker 7: Fresh fruit is atrocious. Sometimes we get bananas, and then
• 28:19
  Speaker 7: sometimes we get strawberries or grapes, but those are like
• 28:23
  Speaker 7: strawberries and grapes are like those are a big deal.
• 28:25
  Speaker 7: Like you go steal like five cups of.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: That, so you pocket them and run out with your
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: pockets full of Absolutely.
• 28:32
  Speaker 7: Absolutely, I'm not joking.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: This is Amanda again, the Vassar sophomore who complained about
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: the guacamal Amanda, the spoiled Californian, as she described herself.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: But I will say this for Amanda. She gets it,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: she understands what's at stake. Atrocious fresh fruit is a
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: small price to pay for a little social justice.
• 28:56
  Speaker 7: I still complain regularly about the food and whatnot, but
• 29:00
  Speaker 7: I just feel much better knowing that that money's going
• 29:02
  Speaker 7: towards something useful. I would much prefer that our school'll
• 29:05
  Speaker 7: be giving money to that than trying to make our
• 29:07
  Speaker 7: food better. You know, first case scenario, you get the
• 29:10
  Speaker 7: minimum meal plan and you can eat out.
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: It's not a big deal.
• 29:26
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• 29:29
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• 29:33
  Speaker 1: You can get more information about this and other episodes
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: at Revisionististory dot com or on your favorite podcast app.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Our show is produced by me La Belle, Roxanne Scott,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: composed by Luis Guerra and Taka Yasuzawa. Flon Williams is
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: our engineer, fact checker Michelle Siraka, and the Panoply management
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: team Laura Mayer, Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
• 30:09
  Speaker 7: I I think was beer completed by the y