Opinion : College economics

     I was jogging through the area around Harvard this evening and looking at the giant homes along some streets in Cambridge.  I have heard that rich people by these homes for their children while they attend Harvard U.  I am not sure that my parents would do that for me even if they could afford to (they can't), but then I considered what a great idea buying these houses is.  Figure that a rich parent buys a townhouse condominium for $3 million for their kid to live in for 4 years.  Assuming that more rich kids will be going to Harvard and will need someplace to live, the parents can then likely sell this house for $3 million to another family, recouping their initial investment.  In that way their kid gets a great place to live in college and it doesn’t really cost them anything.  However, that is just the beginning.  A Harvard education only costs about $120K.  If your town house real estate appreciates 4% in those 4 years (in fact really lagging the recent real estate market), you essentially will not pay anything to send your kid to Harvard.  If the house value increases with the average real estate for the area, you will actually make money on you child's education, even after accounting for broker fees and the BMW that they will need to get around.  

     So an already rich family will make money sending their child to an institution that should ensure the family's continued prosperity.  Now at the same time, poorer students will shell out money that they can't make back to live in crappier housing, saddling themselves with long term debt that even in the best scenario will slow their rise to societies upper classes.  Being firmly in the latter category, my nee-jerk reaction is that this is not fair, but then I thought about it some more.  For most of my time at BU, I lived in the student village, a luxury apt complex with a view of the Charles River.  These apartments were rumored to be worth nearly a quarter million dollars if put on the market as condos, a price that I could never have afforded.  Had the university not financed my loans or rented this property to me I would not have been able to live there, or attend classes at BU for that matter.  In this way, the loaning and renting system lowers the bar for poorer individuals to live better.  The drawback, however, is that it leaves them poorer than when they started.  The question is, as I sit with my huge loan debt in my crappy rented apartment in Cambridge and look out at those more fortunate (but not more educated) than me, should I appreciate the system that got me to this point, or should I hate it for all its inherent unfairness