Tuesday, July 24, 2007

HARDSCRABBLE, INDEED

We're lucky to live in the Ozarks -- lucky just being able to survive here. The New York Times on Wednesday tells the story of College of the Ozarks, and in doing so, the paper reveals how this region is viewed from afar.

College of the Ozarks, according to the paper, is "spread across a thousand acres of the hardscrabble hills and hollows of southwestern Missouri." Makes you want to hit your knees and thank God you can wring a living from the barren, meager land. It's a wonder more people don't up and die from their Joadesque torment.

The NYT report does include this factoid-packed graf:
College of the Ozarks also gets students to do its maintenance and office jobs; student labor accounts for 7.5 percent of the $51 million budget, said Rick Hughes, the business manager. And the college has a $362.8 million endowment, 173rd among the nation’s colleges, which allows it to hand out $11.5 million in scholarships. Three of four students have family incomes low enough to qualify for Federal Pell grants of up to $4,310.

3 comments:

oddjob60 said...

That endowment figure was the only part of the story I read twice, too. Not bad, eh?

The rest was the same story that's been told before, in the Wall Street Journal, for example. It seems CofO gets a major media profile about every 10 years or so.

TT said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I've had two family members attend CofO over the past 20 years. Both committed Christians. They each were only able to deal with the subjugation for an academic year, before moving on to greener, less exploitative pastures.

The "three of four students" who qualify for Pell Grants may the primary reason that CofO even has a student body.