When reports surfaced at the end of last week that Home Security Secretary Tom Ridge intended to leave his position after the November election, the reason offered was that he needed to re-enter the private sector in order to pay for his children's college education. Maybe he simply wants out of a very difficult position and, clearly, he isn't impoverished. His home in Bethesda, Maryland, prices out in the high six figures and he has other resources.

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries (scroll down to 8/7/2004) notes that when the story got picked up in newspapers across the country, they had little sympathy for Ridge but lots of concern for ordinary people with limited resources. Colleges and universities have become extra-ordinarily expensive. There's no end in sight to it and it isn't only that private institutions are expensive. Soltan points to high costs at the University of North Carolina and extra-curricular embarrassments at the University of Georgia. Holding the spiraling costs of administration, student services, and competitive athletics accountable, she says it's time to look again at Tim Burke's proposal for a new college, which defines its mission as education. The proposal looks Spartan to fans of the Bulldogs and the Tarheels, but maybe there ought to be other institutions that"engage the whole person." Colleges and universities ought to look to their primary mission.