Cornell Blog: An unofficial blog about Cornell University

It’s not often that I write about one of Cornell’s finest, but today I will mention Olivia Ong, a senior Textiles and Apparel major. Her invention include a dress treated with silver nanoparticles, which both protect it from getting dirty and kills bacteria. The Cornell Chronicle in Student designer and fiber scientists create a dress that prevents colds and a jacket that destroys noxious gases notes some of the details:

The upper portion of the dress contains cotton coated with silver nanoparticles. Dong first created positively charged cotton fibers using ammonium- and epoxy-based reactions, inducing positive ionization. The silver particles, about 10-20 nanometers across (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter) were synthesized in citric acid, which prevented nanoparticle agglomeration.

Her other invention, a jacket with palladium nanofibers, offers the potential to passively purify the atmosphere. She calls her designer line “something really moving toward the future, and really advanced.”

The only worries are what the side-effects of wearing nano-creations might be. There are probably significant health risks to introducing tiny elementary particles into your system. Sure, they don’t seem to wear off the fabric, but they eventually must. And after that, we’ll have them in the air, in our food, the water supply… and probably evolve them into our basic cell chemistry.

I was interested in how the cost of Cornell University tuition rose compared to other market benchmarks, like general inflation and the stock market. I gathered data from 1980 to 2006 on the yearly inflation rates of Cornell tuition, private American tuition, inflation, and yearly returns on the Dow and Nasdaq indices.

In 1980, if you’d put $1000 into University, you’d now be paying $5905.50. Inflation inflates your $1000 to $2452.37, while the Nasdaq rakes in $5436.02, the Dow $9063.03. Cornell tracks strongly with other University rates, returning $5561.72. The graph makes one thing clear, though–Cornell’s tuition is quickly outstripping inflation, and tracks suspiciously with the higher order return rates common in the stock market. It’s almost like the inexorable rise of our tuition is a hedge against bad investments in the endowment.

In 2020, Cornell University tuition will have skyrocketed:

Right now we’re paying $32,800. In 2020, we’ll be paying $82,440 but our $32,800 will only be worth an $49,613. That’s another $30,000 of 2020 dollars or $20,000 of our real dollars. Therefore, I make this proclamation: In 2020, Cornell University will charge students $53,000 for a year’s tuition–51% more than today!

Michael Robertson writes in The Biggest Gamble of Your Life that in 2005 “young people (ages 18-25) in the US gambled $67 billion,” on College and University. He determined that given the $151,835 investment in a four year private college you would earn $322,000 more than a high school graduate for an effective return on investment of 1.9%. Given that a decent mutual fund will earn a minimum of say 15% return, you’d be about 7 times better putting your money into traditional investments.

What this doesn’t take into account, though, is the personal benefit and satisfaction going to a private college gives you. It’s obviously true that Americans with college degrees are more sophisticated, intelligent members of society, even if they don’t make much more than their less-educated counterparts. After all, since it’s the human mind that makes us more than animals, I feel we have an obligation to develop it at all costs.

Still, the evidence isn’t conclusive. Certainly, the College Board thinks it pays off ultimately. However, the exponentially rising costs of private colleges may make the investment not look so promising.