High Point University (My Alma Mater) Should Never Have To Apologize For Being Too Fancy

Kelly Keegs2/25/2021 7:10 PM

I'm sitting around, minding my own business when this article was sent to my college besties group chat. It basically talks about how there are a lot of colleges now who offer over the top "concierge" type service, and amidst a pandemic, do they seem necessary anymore. It highlights one college, in particular, that is VERY over the top….

HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY! My alma mater, my pride and joy (truthfully, and ironically). Buckle up, in case you didn't know where this was going to go, I am about to die on this hill defending High Point's right to be as fancy as it wants to be. Nate's going to be so psyched, every photo I'm going to use in this blog is from my mom's facebook, or my own digital camera in 2009. I, and my mom, both give Barstoolsports.com permission to use these images.

Ahh yes, High Point University, in High Point, North Carolina. It's my favorite thing to make fun of, and also gives me the best (and worst) memories of my life. I grew up middle class, so I was lucky enough to be able to pick and choose where I wanted to go to school. A High Point recruiter came to my high school, and handed out brochures. The school boasted a steakhouse, an ice cream truck and had INSANE photos of their dorms. It was also in the south, where I wanted to go (because I had never been and I wanted to go somewhere warm) and it had a good enough marketing/communications reputation that I could justify it as a legitimate option for learning, on top of all the bullshit I wanted to do. I begged my parents immediately to go and visit, they said yes. When we got there, we felt like fucking billionaires. I'm not even kidding. We were waited on almost the entire time, our own parking spot, tours, meetings with potential advisors, everything. The place looks like it should be a movie set for some high budget royal gardens or something. It has a movie theater, an arcade, 6 or 7 (I honestly can't remember) different "restaurants" to eat at, that were like legitimate restaurants. Once I ended up enrolling, every time we were hungover we went to The Point (which was like a sports bar) and we would go to The Bakery (basically a Panera) for lunch. There were Starbucks all over the place. Chickfila. Subway. Later on they added things like a fucking farmers market, but the most insane was, and always will be, the steakhouse. It was called 1924 Prime, and you could go once a week for a A MEAL SWIPE. You got an appetizer, a main course, and dessert. The year after I graduated they started allowing you to drink wine, too. I'm pissed about that. But anyway, once a week I was eating tomato basil soup, fucking filet mignon with garlic mashed potatoes, and a chocolate lava cake. Included in my meal plan. Did you know what an amuse bouche was at 18? I did, because of the steakhouse. Oh, and there was a dress code, business casual. And, there was one strict waiter who got REALLY into character always, and would give you shit if you weren't holding your knives and forks the right way. Yes, this is my real life college experience, not a Disney restaurant experience.

I want it to be clear, I am not rich, and neither are my parents. I have NO idea how they allowed me to go to this school, or how much it even cost them. But, whatever they did to make it happen for me, I think it's the best choice they ever made. The whole point of the school being so fancy, as told by our PRESIDENT/KING Nido Qubein:

“I want my children to be exposed to the finer things,” he told a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter. “Most parents do.”

That's fucking right. I was 18 years old, doing some of the fanciest shit I had EVER done. And you know what else? The classes were actually good. Not all of them, but I've legitimately used things I learned from my Social Media class (!! in 2011!) in my real life. It's my PROFESSION NOW. In my Marketing 101 class, my professor had us do ACTUAL elevator pitches. He had an old business friend, some retired CEO millionaire, come in one morning and ride the elevator up and down with everyone in the class, listening to their pitches and giving my professor feedback afterwards. Shit you would never experience if your parents weren't paying out the ass to make it happen. Doing all of this shit was supposed to make you "used" to these kinds of things, so you were never feeling intimidated walking into a high powered situation. My school essentially teaches you how to "act like you've been there before."

That said, Qubein told me he thinks too much has been made of High Point’s luxury amenities. Without the physical transformation that took place in the first decade or so of his leadership, he does not think the university would have survived. Now he finds talk of water features boring. “If you look carefully, they are the cheapest kinds of pools,” he said. “These are not lazy rivers. You don’t see slides.”

Nido Qubein is one of the most interesting guys in the world. He's from Lebanon, came over to America with like, 6 bucks or something absurd, and eventually became the President of High Point in 2005. Since then, the city's economy has gone crazy and the university has become an anomaly. I was there from 2009-2013, and every single year I lived in a brand new dorm. They would build new places over the summer, and you would come back to dorms that were laughably nicer and MUCH bigger than any NYC apartment I've ever lived in. Summer of 2011, they built an ENTIRE Greek Village. 12 mansion houses that held 15 people each, with a pool and a gym. The amount of change I saw in 4 years was unreal.

Here's where it gets tough - the article says that because of the school's amenities (which presumably raise the cost) it makes it almost impossible for those who need financial assistance to attend, and it limits the diversity on campus.

The new student body president at High Point professed a desire, in an interview with the campus newspaper, to see the school prioritize student involvement, mental health, diversity, and transparency, but he didn’t go into much detail. Just 25 percent of High Point students identify as something other than white, and that’s the school’s highest figure ever.

Was High Point diverse? No, it was not. Especially if you were in Greek Life. I can definitely see how it would "seem to be non inclusive," because it's not inclusive. Probably because I'm white, I didn't think much of it at the time. I just assumed I was surrounded by a bunch of WASPy rich kids, because I was, and they were only there because the school was fancy, too. I feel like sometimes people confuse "naivety" and "privilege," but I guess the argument can be made that they are one in the same. I'm happy to now know, this "non inclusiveness" at least has an excuse:

USC invests a decent amount of money in welcoming students who qualify for Pell Grants, meaning they come from lower-income families. Among all undergraduates, 21 percent are Pell recipients. The school also meets all of the need they demonstrate via their financial aid applications.
High Point can’t afford that. It asks students from households with incomes of $50,000 or less to pay, on average, more than twice what USC does. And its Pell Grant percentage in 2018 was 10.4 percent, down seven points in as many years.
Luxury education brands of longer standing are usually flush enough to help more lower-income students, if they choose to. But the providers of newer luxury products can’t just yet.

Nido's in this for the long game, people. He's not going to get cancelled RIGHT as he's about to burst through the bubble. He's coming up on 20 years, and if I know this man, I know he can build at LEAST 6 more buildings and another lacrosse field before he hits his anniversary. If anything, I hope this article funnels more money into High Point and it becomes a mega school like USC. I constantly wish everyone I know got to have the same college experience that I did. Why are we going to shame the people that are 1. trying to give their kids this kind of experience, 2. have the money to do so and 3. are inadvertently contributing to the future of a school that could do amazing things for people now, and even more in the future? I choose High Point's side every single time on this.

As for the PEOPLE who attend High Point? Like I said, WASPy rich kids. A LOT of assholes. But, you know what? Now I know exactly how to deal with a bunch of assholes. High Point wins again.

And now to field a few obvious questions about my college experience: Is being in a sorority like being in a cult? Yes. Was I incredibly good at it? Also yes.

I will now share with you a few of my awful personal photos, that do the school no justice at all. The statues, pictured below, sat on the benches along the promenade. We loved to get high and go have fake conversations with them.