Knowing that college tuition and fees have grown faster than inflation for most of the past twenty years, I sometimes wonder how effectively the money is spent. A 2002 lawsuit alleged that Princeton University misspent part of the Robinson family’s $35 million (in 1961 dollars) gift, intended to train graduate students to serve in the federal government. The suit produced over 170,000 pages of documents and 120 days of depositions, including testimony from four Princeton presidents. A recent Wall Street Journal article quantifies callous waste:
Both sides said they settled in large part to avoid legal fees that already totaled roughly $40 million apiece…
Why didn’t either side recognize sooner that $80 million could have been better spent on education? Princeton president Shirley M. Tilghman’s depiction of this episode as “a tragedy” hits the bullseye.