To start this post I'm going to have to admit that I watch Gossip Girl. *And* that I then read the recaps on TWoP for Gossip Girl. Which take the show way more seriously than I do, but it is fascinating to see what the author reads into the show. (Some of what he says is probably what the show writers intended. Some of it seems to come from the recapper. It is the same uneasiness that I always felt when studying stuff in English - at a certain point the themes and points and insights that supposedly come from the text seem much more, to my thinking, to come from the analyzers.)

So, the point. In one of the least appealing roles I have ever seen Gina Torres play, she spouts off that she "[doesn't] believe in private universities" because "knowledge should not be for sale." In addition to hating the rudeness inherent in the time and place she chose to share this philosophy, I disagree with her in so many ways.
1. Pet peeve the first: doesn't believe in them? As in thinks they do not exist? Learn to say what you mean.
2. Last I checked public universities charged tuition too.
3. The recapper also made a claim elsewhere that private universities serve to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. Well. Perhaps *some* private universities who refuse to even publish their legacy numbers do have that effect. But many private universities have excellent financial aid plans. So much so that the truly poor can attend them for free assuming that they have the academic credentials to be accepted. I attended such a university before today's more generous financial aid methodology came into use and I still recieved a generous grant that paid for much of my schooling based on my "demonstrated financial need."
4. As someone who attended a private university, perhaps I am biased. But I did not pay for knowledge.

• I paid for the time and attention of my professors. And while it is all well and good to say "knowledge shouldn't be for sale" it is not in any way ok to say that just because someone has knowledge they should be compelled to put their time and energy into spreading that knowledge and not be compensated.
• I paid for access to hundreds of thousands of books in the university library. Books which anyone off the street is welcome to walk in and peruse. But the money to purchase and care for these books has to come from somewhere. Just because they contain "knowledge" does not obligate construstion workers to build the library without being paid, nor librarians to work there without being paid, nor the utility companies to donate the energy required to maintain the proper temperature / humidity.
• I paid for the buildings in which I lived and learned. I paid for the computers in the computer clusters on campus on which I completed my homework. All of which were, perhaps, necessary to my studies and none of which materialize out of thin air merely because they would be involved in the pursuit of knowledge.

I also disagree that the purpose of any university, public or private, is merely the transmittal of knowledge. But that is a different topic for another day.