Aim to reduce costs for students

I have been getting an increasing number of donation solicitations from my alma mater this year and now I see why.

With plunging enrollments and demographic decline among high school graduates in the Pennsylvania region, the University of Pittsburgh is launching another risible and irresponsible “master plan,” banking on 10% growth per year.

I earned both my undergraduate and graduate degrees from Pitt. I loved every minute of my time on campus. That was over 10 years ago, and the campus facilities were just fine, thank you very much. The movement toward fashioning college campuses into all-inclusive resorts, cost-be-damned, is profoundly contrary to what I see as the point of college: learning a trade and, just as important, learning to be an adult.

“College class” young people are coddled enough in our society (I certainly was). When their less-fortunate peers are entering the workforce in lowpaying, often physically demanding jobs, the college bound are off to the playground of the campus. This infantilization serves to further alienate the college educated from those people who directly enter the workforce or the military. We’ve certainly been reaping the rewards of this alienation over the past decade, haven’t we?

Pitt is already among the most expensive public-related academic institutions in the country. The school should be spending the next 25 years figuring out how to reduce costs and attract more low-income students, not rebuilding a city neighborhood into a glorified playground without concern for the costs that will be passed on to future students.

NEIL MANGANARO

Lawrenceville