Hacker News Reader

Comment by antipax | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, the article comes off kind of like someone who was a billionaire complaining about how they've become a millionaire. We don't get free coffee or free hot breakfast every weekday morning in the dorms at my school.

View on HN

The Harvard brand provokes a lot of resentment, and writers of articles like this one tap into that resentment by going on about these luxuries.

And maybe that's how it is for undergraduate athletes, or business school students, but let me assure you: it is not so luxurious for this particular neuroscience graduate student.

But I can't complain -- I still find it remarkable that I get paid -- albeit a barely livable stipend, but still, paid -- to do science. I am grateful to be a well-educated American during the most prosperous era in human history, and I will do my utmost not to waste the opportunity: I will do as much science as I can, while the good times last. Maybe my whole lifetime, maybe just another five years, who knows? But this is the time when it can get done.

Well, I'm not trying to be flippant, but if I was paying $50k a year (tuition + board) to attend Harvard, a free hot breakfast is the least they could do.

But yeah, I can agree it's a poor example to throw out there as 'experiencing hard times'.

Colleges like Harvard have a large ecosystem and keep a lot of people employed either directly or indirectly, like cooks, cashiers, groundskeepers, IT staff, teaching and research assistants, companies that make technology for them to use, architects and engineers who design, construct, and maintain their buildings, and more.

However hard it is for someone attending Harvard to go without breakfast, it's much harder for the cook supporting a family on $10/hr or whatever to suddenly have 0$/hr and no heath insurance.

Exactly. Staff cuts like that would have been a much better example than the loss of what most would consider a luxury.

Harvard never got free hot breakfast on weekday mornings. There is a nearly $800 a year meal plan, from which hot breakfast was just eliminated without changing the cost. Very different than losing the free coffee.

$100 a month... $3 a day?

To be fair, many other "elite" (translation: you pay a ridiculous amount of money to attend) do receive these benefits. I believe our breakfasts are part of our meal plan at Northwestern, but I would assume that Harvard has some kind of similar student meal plan.

They are included in our meal plan, but we admittedly pay a ridiculous amount of money for food that's really not that great.

Just registered to do a Northwestern High-Five!

food that's not really that great.

Understatement of the year, man...

I was thinking that too. Those poor diddumses! Next thing you know they'll have to do their own laundry.

Harvard's demise might be a sobering economic indicator, but I wonder if there'd be many who actually mourned its passing? To me it's nothing but a old boy's club filled with entitled trust fund brats, and the only real benefit of going there is that you then get hired by the previous generation of intolerable WASP twats. And members of this little club seem to have made an outsize contribution to the ills of wall street, law, government and the current crisis.

Who respects Harvard? Who'd miss it? Not I.

I respect Harvard; they do great work. I think the world would significantly miss it if Harvard, it's really hard to respond to such a poor argument, but the medical school alone is a world changing institution.

Well, looks like their PR department does great work, indeed. But it's not just their token medical school - I think their business school and law departments have also been "world changing institutions", just maybe not in a positive way.

Anyway this idea of having elite schools for an elite class is dangerous. Just look at the list below. Nepotism and class segregation by proxy, that's all Harvard is. Oh lookie, there's Obama! He went to Harvard, replacing GWB, who - surprise - went to Harvard. And the CEO of Goldman Sachs, who replaced the old CEO who also went to Harvard! What a coincidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harvard_Law_School_alum...

Make no mistake. Harvard is "The Man" writ in bricks and stone. I am not very much a fan of The Man, which is why I am not unhappy to see The Man in trouble financially. But no worries, if things really get bad I'm sure a bailout's on the way.

Whats with the downvotes? I, for one, largely agree with you.

HN isn't reddit, at least not yet. Populist/anti-establishment/anti-elite sentiment doesn't guarantee upvotes regardless of comment merit here.

You haven't got any idea whether particular successful people coming out of Harvard deserve their success (well, I grant you GWB).

Do you not consider it possible that Harvard selects intelligent, talented applicants likely to succeed, and that a few of them do go on to succeed? Why do you assume there is some upper class conspiracy?

Edit: I'd love to understand why this comment was downvoted - I can't see what's wrong with it.

The undergraduate population often sound like a bunch of snots, which .. they probably are by and large. But that's true at every university. Rare indeed is the undergraduate who actually has something worthwhile to say. As a grad school and research institution though, Harvard rocks. Every single department has one or more faculty who are at the top of their respective field. Think about that statement, it's pretty amazing.

If I was paying the cost of Harvard tuition, I would demand a free, hot breakfast. Borne aloft on a bed of feathers and myrrh by six naked, greased eunuchs.

Greased? I'm afraid to ask how that adds to the experience.

I was more surprised by "eunuchs".

I would expect my breakfast to be borne by nymphs.

I would expect to be downvoted by eunuchs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com