It’s not exactly breaking news, but the City Paper’s cover story this week is about the George Washington University and its high tuition, tops in the nation. The somewhat basic article (at least to a GW grad and basketball blogger) talks to a few University officials and a couple of students, but seems a little thin.

The article does make a good point (and one that we made months ago) — is it worth it? And just looking numerically, with the school having the highest tuition but ranked 54th by U.S. News, then no, it’s not. However, some of the anecdotes in the article, which apparently are trying to show that the school spends extravagantly, seem a little forced.

The piece opens with Colonial Inauguration, GW’s freshman orientation. It talks about the University buying $4,000 worth of shorts for the students who staff the event and interviews the man who runs the $25,000 $2,500 a minute laser light show. Do those seem excessive? Yes. But in the article’s first paragraph, it says without quoting anyone “CI is one of the university’s selling points.” Really? Kids choose colleges based on their orientations? I doubt too many kids say “Well I really liked NYU and Boston U, but I hear GW has lasers in their orientation. My mind is made up.”

Another interesting tidbit is a quote from Margaret Soltan, an English professor, who talks about a “culture of wealth,” saying, “All you have to do is walk up and down 21st Street and see all these fancy SUVs and Porsches and realize that they are being driven by 20-year-olds.” However, the reporter doesn’t go and see for themselves or try to dig deeper into the “culture of wealth.” When I was at GW from 1998 to 2002, I don’t remember anyone I knew of having a Porsche. In fact, most students, rich or not so rich, didn’t have cars at all. The rumor then was that a lot of children of sheiks and sultans went to GW, but no one seemed to know for sure, and this article doesn’t find out.