And demand at top-flight colleges for the internships, which had tailed off slightly during the financial crisis, has come roaring back.
The language is pure Madison Avenue, but it is richly in vogue among paid counselors who advise students on how to make strong impressions with top-flight colleges.
Mr. Spitzer has been devoted to his daughters, and after his eldest, Elyssa, was accepted into three top-flight colleges, Harvard, Princeton and Williams, he e-mailed a former aide and urged her to "have a drink with an umbrella for us".
In fact, more than one-third of all flight attendants have college degrees, even though college is not required by the airlines.
Officer Susi, who had wanted to fly since he was 8, began flight lessons in college.
THE flight paths of college costs and state budgets are diverging to the point that C. D. Mote Jr., president of the University of Maryland at College Park, says he doesn't know how much longer the ship can hold.
But now, as the nation faces a teacher shortage of some 2.5 million in the next decade, substitute rosters are threadbare, and districts are turning to flight attendants, firefighters, college students and others.
My son used the first ticket, but he is not using the second, for reasons he explained when he called from a pay phone at San Francisco Airport, a very long time after his father had dropped him off to catch his flight back to college after the October trip.
