The cost of tuition probably really pisses you off (or more accurately, pisses your parents off), and since it costs somewhere in the neighborhood $13,000 for Pennsylvania residents and $24,000 for out-of-state residents to attend Penn State most of you (or, again your parents) are probably taking loans. So you, (ahem, your parents) will be happy to know that the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, the agency most people borrow from, spent $26,611 on "rally towels" at two Penn State football games recently. That's some good money management right there.

So the PHEAA has been getting a lot of flack for the last couple years after it was discovered the agency spent $768,000 on personal trips to "posh resorts" among other things. Actually the agency spends money left and right since at least 12 executives at PHEAA earn more than Gov. Ed Rendell who makes $164,500, which is probably part of the reason I'll be paying student loans until the day I die.

In today's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review there is a list of some of the more recent expenditures by the agency which include the "rally towels," a $5,300 tab for 14 people at a Scottsdale, Ariz. steakhouse, $10,000 worth of iPod Nanos for an Internet contest, $11,500 on screwdriver sets as giveaway items at conferences and spent $66,640 on Hershey's candy packages for 2,380 clients.

Here's my question, with the price of tuition, not only at Penn State but everywhere, why would the PHEAA need to spend money to get people to use their product? Although I totally get the money on the Hershey's thing, have you seen the price of chocolate these days?