We at The Observer can’t help but feel a little cheated; where are our iPads? As explained in “Education is For the Elite” by Monique John on page six, Avenues: The World School, a private school for children only a few subway stations away, shows a new age in education. Avenues seems to stand for limitless possibilities and endless resource—but at a very high price.

At $40,000 a year, Avenue’s tuition is dangerously close to our own tuition here at Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC). Unfortunately, all that capital doesn’t fully correlate to prestige.

As Mehgan Abdelmassih reported in “Fordham Falls Five in Best Colleges Ranking” on page four, Fordham has fallen five spots, from 53rd to 58th, in the 2013 U.S. News and World Report ranking of Best Colleges. With waxing tuition and waning rankings, what can we expect from this falling institution? Maybe we are suffering from the economy’s slow growth. Maybe we are just having a bad year. Fordham’s ranking has, of course, gained 23 spots since 2003, and the numbers do not mean the end of the world.

But the facts point to something else, a potential pattern of depreciation. In addition to the decrease in overall ranking, our recent ranking as the worst campus dining in America by the Princeton Review emphasizes a simple fact that most students at FCLC know to be true: Fordham has some work to do.

On the bright side, Fordham seems to be listening. The school released a survey in September asking for reactions to Sodexo’s services in hopes of helping the student body craft their own culinary experience. Fordham also recently showed proof that it will fight for diversity. As Harry Huggins reports in “Fordham Supports Affirmative Action Case” on page four, Fordham President the Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., joined the “friend of the court” briefing for the affirmative action case heading to the Supreme Court.

As the construction of the new law building moves closer to completion and new programs come to Lincoln Center, the university expects these rankings to improve. For us students spending a small fortune in tuition each, we are all banking our futures in the job market on the value of our Fordham degrees. So for our sake, we sure hope that this drop does not become a plunge.