So remember “Can’t Buy Me Love,” the 80’s teen flick starring Patrick Dempsey as a hopeless nerd who buys his way into popularity and romance? Of course you do. So then you remember how the most popular girl in school falls in love with this nerd, teaching us that we can, in fact, buy love? Well, according to this article, the same is true with higher education – except the nerd is thousands of American college students, and the popular girl is the highly selective colleges, and love is education.

As though a myriad of other factors didn’t drive up tuition costs enough, some colleges apparently increase their costs to entice students to apply and to stay competitive. Both Ursinus College and Harvard University now charge students over $33,000 a year. Ursinus’ president is banking on these tuition hikes to attract students to the tiny Pennsylvanian college. Kind of like how buying a popular girl for $1,000 can endear an entire high school – nay, an entire generation – to Patrick Dempsey.

Posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 12:58 am in New York Times. Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.