Excellent article by Leo Shaw examining the politics and morality of corporate food service vs. farm-to-school food avenues. Listening carefully to the podcast, you realize that Gladwell is oddly mocking the fresh, locally-sourced, creative menus of an exceptional and hard-working chef at Bowdoin and, on top of it, falsely linking it to poor financial aid policies (which at Bowdoin are so laudable they were just named third best college in the entire nation for financial aid by The 2017 Princeton Review of Best Colleges). What’s up with that?
The ingredients or dishes at Bowdoin Gladwell sneers at in his podcast, i.e. “fresh rosemary,” and“eggplant parmesan pancakes” are on second glance neither lavish or gourmet, but a cost-effective way to add interest and fresh vegetables to a cafeteria diet. Gladwell also ignores the cultural economics of affluent Vassar students being able to self-segregate with expensive off-campus dining alternatives when their corporate food source is unappetizing. Good campus food is not only an opportunity equalizer that keeps students of all economic levels socializing together in on-campus dining halls but also provides excellent nutrition for their developing brains and bodies. That is the true moral issue.
Additionally, looking only at Pell grants does not tell the whole story of any college’s financial aid program, as it doesn’t capture the financial aid given to lower, but now lowest, income families. Vassar does an exemplary job of financial aid, but so does Bowdoin. Bowdoin is one of 15 need-blind colleges in the country. Students receiving financial aid from Bowdoin graduate debt-free, while about 63 percent of students receiving government Pell Grants need additional student loans to cover the cost of college: (https://www.debt.org/students/pell-grants/. By 2013–2014, Pell Grants only covered 31-percent of college costs. If Gladwell truly cares about the moral issue of financial aid, instead of advising low income students “Don’t go to Bowdoin,” a top-ranked college where they have need-blind admissions, eat nutritional food on campus as part of their financial aid package, and also graduate debt-free, he should examine what is happening with student debt and Pell Grants at our large publicly-funded state universities (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/college-the-great-unleveler/).
Additional sources for curious Medium Readers:
Bowdoin College’s fact-based response to the Gladwell podcast:
Alexis Sobel Fitts in Columbia Journalism Review on Gladwell’s cherry-picked correlations:
Malcolm Gladwell’s paid corporate speech disclosure statement:
