Is it just New York’s Columbia University or is the insatiable demand for this thing called Nutella spreading throughout the land? Nutella, for the pure and uninitiated, is that heavenly peanut butter-like, chocolate-based spread made with hazelnuts. Suck one spoonful and you’ll be dipping and sucking for hours, thanks to Nutella’s No.1 ingredient, sugar. Chocolate junk food, sure, but its Italian origins give Nutella the panache to practically lift it into the gourmet realm.
College students apparently have developed a bona fide craving for the stuff, leading to massive amounts of recreational Nutella abuse.
Two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that at Columbia, the amount of Nutella taken out of the dining halls to be consumed later in dorm rooms amounted to “thousands of dollars a week.” Among the dining hall crowd, Nutella is tantamount to Columbia’s drug of choice.
Like recreational drugs, Nutella is not cheap. Two big jars go for just under $7 at my local Costco.
Could that be the reason why tuition at Columbia is $47,246 a year?
The high cost of college certainly should be a concern to all, especially after that report released last week by the non-profit State Higher Educaton Executive Officers Association, cited in Charles Blow’s column in The New York Times:
“In the ‘new normal,’ retirement and health care costs simultaneously drive up the cost of higher education, and compete with education for limited public resources. The ‘new normal’ no longer expects to see a recovery of state support for higher education, such as occurred repeatedly in the last half of the 20th century. The ‘new normal’ expects students and their families to continue to make increasingly greater financial sacrifices in order to complete a postsecondary education. The ‘new normal’ expects schools and colleges to find ways of increasing productivity and absorb ever-larger budget cuts, while increasing degree production without, we hope, compromising quality.”
