Editorial | Misleading the public

In the race to bolster public image as the college selection season approaches, some schools will do anything to get ahead.

This past week, Princeton University announced that they were freezing tuition. While most schools, like Penn, have been and will continue to raise tuition from year to year, Princeton officials announced that they would use their substantial endowment to prevent a price increase.

The praise Princeton received immediately after the story broke was justified, until it was revealed that the tuition freeze would be accompanied by a 19 percent increase in room and board costs. This meant that despite the tuition freeze, the cost of attending Princeton went up by 4.2 percent.

Considering the fact that nearly all Princeton students live on campus, this new initiative does little to help with the overall cost of college.

But the worst part was that Princeton tried to use this as a way to put themselves above other schools. In a New York Times article, Robert Durkee - Princeton's vice president and secretary of the university - was quoted saying that they froze tuition in response to the "high cost of sending kids to college," effectively making Princeton seem like the good guy in a crowd of greedy peer institutions.

Thankfully, most news outlets picked up on Princeton's misinformation. The high cost of attending college is a real issue, and any school that actually makes it cheaper to go to college should be praised.

Had Princeton done a better job concealing the room and board increase, some students might have applied to Princeton, unaware that while the cost of attending class will stay the same next year, it will cost 19 percent more to eat and live on campus. Making the process of paying for college more complicated than it already is the wrong course of action - even if they had good intentions, hopefully few schools will follow Princeton's lead.

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