Here’s a link to a little Google mashup that shows you where the top 10 most expensive colleges are in the United States.  I’m going to use this sites to steer my children away from these particular institutions, but despite what you might think it’s not only because of the money.

While I was in school I spent quite a bit of time on the campus of the most expensive school, George Washington University, and from that experience I learned a couple of important lessons:

• When drinking is involved, the idiotic behavior of the students is directly proportional to the amount of money the drinkers’ parents are spending on their education.  It was only at GWU that I witnessed people flinging themselves off of fire escapes into the kind-of-waiting arms of their even-more-drunk brethren.  I never saw equally stupid behavior at my state-school with one tenth the tuition, George Mason University.
• I also spent a little time at the number two school on the list, the University of Richmond.  I had a distinct dislike for those guys because the Spiders routinely knocked GMU out of the CAA tournament when Richmond was still in the conference.  On top of that they were some snotty SOBs even before they started drinking and the aforementioned rule kicked in.  In short, lesson #2 is that money doesn’t buy class.

Okay, okay, it’s more than a little about the money.  I’m not sure I want to, or even can, swing the equivalent of a car payment x 8 for my childrens’ education.  Unless they get themselves a heckuva scholarship it just ain’t happening.  But that’s okay because my main goals are to get them to 18 still healthy (I’m talking about them), educated well enough that someone will let them into their school, and sane enough to appreciate it (I’m talking about me).  I’m not too terribly picky about where they go, as long as they go…right away.  None of this "I need to discover myself" BS, because if they want to discover themselves they can do it on their own nickel in their own roach infested hell-hole.  I’m pretty sure that’s when they’ll "discover" higher education is where it’s at.

After kid #3 gets his papers I have a plan.  I’ve informed Celeste but she doesn’t think I’m serious, but I have a feeling when kid #1 gets ready to graduate (hopefully in the same swift five years it took his dad) and we’re looking the possibility of a boomerang kid square in the eyes she’ll buy into my plan.  It’s really quite simple in its brilliance: we’ll sell the house, buy an RV using the proceeds and some of the money we saved by not sending our kids to one of America’s expensive and vastly overrated learning institutions, and then we’ll tour the States.  We’ll coordinate with the kids for holidays and just show up.  Heck we might even swing by and visit between the holidays, but the roost will be moving and I seriously doubt any sane 22 year old would want to fly back to it.  We’ll keep the trailer until the kids get married and start creating their own private agony known as parenthood and then we’ll buy a house that requires zero upkeep (i.e. has no yard) near them so we can spoil the little brats, er grandkids, and send them home with their parents.

So we’ll get away for a while, recover some remnant of our pre-kids souls, and actually begin to speak in full sentences again.  We’ll recharge our batteries and ready ourselves to unleash life’s greatest reward: grandparents’ revenge.