End of the University as we Know it
From Mark C. Taylor, of the New York Times:
Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work “The Conflict of the Faculties,” wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.”
Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization…Continue reading on the New York Times >>
Will the Mexican Swine Flu outbreak in the U.S. drive students, parents to seek alternative schools?
The deadly swine flu epidemic in Mexico has moved to the U.S.. We’ll be posting updates to the story, here:
- Government Declares Public Health Emergency
- WaPo: Swine Flu Found in Mexican Outbreak – Illness Raises Alarm Among U.S. Officials (Video)
- NYT: Swine Flu Fears at a Private School in Queens
- NYT: Fighting Deadly Flu, Mexico Shuts Schools
Richard Vedder Celebrates Gerald Gunderson
By Richard Veddar of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP):
Gerald Gunderson is my age and, like me, an economic historian. We both wrote economic history textbooks four score and seven years ago (give or take 45 years). We have always liked each other and respected each other. I only see Jerry once in a great while, but always enjoy the contact. He holds the Davis Chair in Free Enterprise (or somesuch name) at Trinity College in Connecticut, a fine liberal arts school.
Gerry made the front page of the Wall Street Journal today, and became my hero du jour or even hero de semaine. Trinity has a huge endowment for Gerry’s chair –far more than needed to pay his salary. He has proposed over the years creating additional faculty positions consistent with the donor’s intent –promoting free enterprise, market capitalism,etc. The college said that violates donor intent. But the school has tried now to spend the money on scholarships for international students, clearly not the intent of Shelby Cullom Davis. Allegedly some family members said it was okay to use the monies in an alternative way, although some of them now say they were not fully informed of either Prof. Gunderson’s concerns or of Mr. Davis’s clear intent (Trinity deceived them).
Gerry went to the Connecticut Attorney General, or at least that is what John Hechinger of the Journal reports, and told them of the alleged misappropriation. Hell has been raised, President Jones of Trinity has allegedly threatened Gerry (a dumb, dumb thing to do), etc. I suspect (and hope) that other alums, trustees, and donors will put President Jones’s feet to the fire.
Universities do this sort of thing all the time. The Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis was funded by many donors, the largest of which was the Olin Foundation. The donors clearly intended for the money to be used for promoting free market economics, the perils of regulation, etc. After Murray Weidenbaum retired, Wash U named his research center after him, but took the center off in an altogether new direction. Then there was the Robertson grant to Princeton, where the school returned big bucks to the family to settle what had obviously been a perversion of donor intent. The stories go on and on.
I think there should be criminal penalties against university officials who steal, in effect, donor money, and I think that court approval should be needed, perhaps after consultation with other heirs, before any modification of gifts can be made.
To be sure, times change, and often the resource allocations arising from restricted gifts may not be optimal in almost anyone’s eyes. But unless the donor’s intent is honored, universities are engaging in the moral equivalent of theft, which is morally wrong. The Ten Commandments may not count for much on college campuses these days, but flouting one of those commandments should have consequences, financial if not otherwise.
New Unrest on Campus as Donors Rebel
From Don Hechinger, of the Wall Street Journal Online:
HARTFORD, Conn. — Financially strapped colleges are angering their benefactors by selling school radio stations, auctioning Georgia O’Keeffe paintings and dipping into endowments for purposes their donors may not have intended.
In one previously undisclosed fight, Trinity College in Connecticut is facing government scrutiny for its plan to spend part of a $9 million endowment from Wall Street investing legend Shelby Cullom Davis.
Trinity’s Davis professor of business, Gerald Gunderson, says he believed the plan, which would have funded scholarships for international students, violated the wishes of the late Mr. Davis. He alerted the Connecticut attorney general’s office. Then, Mr. Gunderson said in notes submitted to the agency, Trinity’s president summoned him to the school’s cavernous Gothic conference room, where he called the professor a “scoundrel” and threatened not to reappoint him.
Trinity said some of Mr. Davis’s family approved of the plan but it is now coming up with a new one, and declined to discuss the meeting.
Battles such as the one at Trinity show why the nation’s universities may have trouble finding the cash for urgent needs in a deep recession. As schools struggle more than they have in decades to fund their core operations, many are looking to a rich pool of so-called restricted gifts — held in endowments whose donors often provide firm instructions on how their money should be spent…Continue reading on WSJ >>
Duquesne University’s enrollments down
From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:
In a further sign of how the recession is battering colleges, Duquesne University yesterday notified employees that it is freezing pay, explaining that student deposits so far are down for the fall…The president said the school has seen an increase of 18 percent in its freshman applicant pool this year and a 23 percent increase in graduate school applications…(more)
National Report Card on Higher Education
The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education based in San Jose, CA issues annual reports on higher education. Here’s the summary of their 2008 Report on Higher Education:
…Measuring Up 2008 identifies clearly the key areas of improvement and decline in higher education performance in the United States. States have made some modest advances, but these improvements are overshadowed by larger gains by other countries, and by the deterioration of college affordability throughout the United States. The relative erosion of our national “educational capital” has occurred at a time when we need more people to be college educated and trained because of Baby Boomer retirements and rising skill requirements for new and existing jobs.
Meanwhile, states are grappling with substantial budget shortfalls. In this fiscal cycle, state leaders face a crucial choice in determining state policy for higher education. They can respond to their current budget crises in the usual patterns of the past, by allowing tuition and student aid policy to play second fiddle to institutional finance. States that select this course will most likely see precipitous tuition increases, cuts in student financial aid, and drops in college access. Further, if states take this path in being passive and complicit in allowing the brunt of the financial distress to be passed to students and families, then our national and state gaps in college access and completion will worsen, and college affordability will continue to deteriorate.
But states have another option: to establish state policies for tuition and student aid that balance the financial burden for higher education among states, the institutions of higher education, and students and families. This is both a short- and long-term strategy that makes state policy more transparent, grounds it in the needs and financial circumstances of state residents, establishes college affordability as a priority, protects educational opportunity, and in the process helps to meet the needs of states and the nation for a well-educated workforce and citizenry…(more)
Student Credit Card Debt Increasing
From Kathy Chu, of USA Today:
As college costs soar, students are charging more educational expenses to plastic, helping boost credit card debt to record levels…
…Lenders are also pulling back on private loans, making it harder for some students to pay for college. Student loans backed by the federal government, however, are still readily available.
Credit cards are the “lender of last resort,” says Kalman Chany, president of Campus Consultants, a college funding adviser. “If (students) can’t get private loans, they turn to credit cards.”
Rescheduled: Live Podcast 04/23/09: John Hilston – The Banking Crisis!
Dr. John Hilston will be speaking with Dr. Bishirjian on Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 3PM Mountain.
John Hilston earned a B.S. in Industrial Management from Grove City (PA) College (1996). At Grove City, he studied under G. Dirk Mateer and Walter E. Williams. After graduating from Grove City, John worked as a Project Engineer, Real Estate Tax Specialist, and Insurance Statistical Analyst. In 1998 he earned an M.A. in Economics from Cleveland State University (1998) and is completing the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership at University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL.
Mr. Hilston taught at six different Cleveland/Akron, OH, colleges for two years and for three years he taught Economics at Seminole Community College in Sanford, FL. He is presently teaching Economics and Business courses for Colorado Technical University an Internet-based institution located in Colorado Springs, CO. His academic interests include public choice theory and political economy.
In his spare time, Mr. Hilston serves as a Seminole County (FL) Republican Executive Committeeman.
You’ll be able to listen here by clicking on the player below. If you’d like to join in the chats, you’ll need to register for a Blog Talk Radio listener account. If you are a Blog Talk Radio member, be sure to add Yorktown-University to your favorites.
Yorktown University President Asks, ‘Are we a Christian Nation?’
From Dr. Richard Bishirjian:
Yesterday our BASP President told the Turkish People that America is not a Christian nation. What is a BASP and is America a Christian nation?
In the early days of William F. Buckley’s editorship of National Review that journal featured essays by a delightful group of intellectuals that Buckley collected from the cream of the conservative crop. One of them was an Austrian Catholic, Erik Ritter von Kuehnnelt Leddihn. In addition to writing books and regular columns in National Review, Erik von Kuehnnelt Leddihn would tour America giving lectures on college campuses. I attended one of his lectures during a time of racial turbulence in the United States in which he observed that America doesn’t have a race problem, America has a Black Anglo Saxon Problem. (BASP)
He perceived that the clamor for equal rights of Black Americans had a uniquely Christian and Anglo Saxon cast reflecting the religious and legal traditions of Anglo Saxon England. Yes, when the Constitution was framed the Founders decided against having an Established Church like the Church of England, but virtually all were shaped by the Protestant Reformation, the religious impulse that motivated the early English settlers, and the Founders understood that the American people reflected Protestant Christianity in all its many forms. America was—and is—a Christian nation, and when Americans of any race express their grievances, we do so in terms of that tradition and the English political and philosophic tradition. The majority of Americans are white and black Anglo Saxon Protestants.
It was curious, therefore, to watch the President of the United States—a true Black Anglo Saxon Protestant—lecture the Turkish Parliament on how similar secular Turkey is to the secular United States and how Kemal Attaturk is Turkey’s George Washington. And In an unnecessary appropriation of dominion over the rest of the world, the President went on to say he championed Turkey’s admission into the European Union. Moreover, the impulse to make Turkey secular was grounded in the problems of Islamic extremism with which we are dealing today. To equate the secularization of a Muslim nation to the Founding of the United States is simply bad history, perhaps even intentional distortion of the historical record.
However we interpret the President’s remarks in Turkey, it is breathtaking, to say the least, to listen to this unique self-interpretation of the American political order by an American head of state since it is false to its core.
Americans share the values and traditions of Western culture and particularly the political, legal and philosophic heritage of the English people and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. As such, we are a community shaped by Christianity and we are a uniquely Christian nation.
The President’s interpretation of the nation as an amalgam of “citizens” barely touches the surface of understanding what we, the American people, are. We “citizens” carry the cultural values of Christianity and thus are not individual blank tablets on which anything may be written. And, especially, it may not be written that America is not a Christian nation.
Yes, we are persons of all faiths, mostly concentrated in the faith of Catholics, Protestants and Jews. We share with our Jewish neighbors a reverence for the word of God and, for the most part, we read the same works that explain God’s covenant with Israel. That covenant lives today in the memory of American history beginning with the Mayflower Compact and we live in a community of persons whose citizenship is informed by our experience of God. The word “person” reflects the admonition of the Commandment of God that Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me and the Biblical truth that we are made in God’s image. Our personhood reflects the face of God in whose image we are made, and that reflection in every human soul gives meaning and value to all our “rights” as citizens.
Stripping all this from our understanding of who we are as American citizens and what that citizenship means in the Judaeo-Christian tradition is unacceptable by any President of the United States or any other state or local elected official. The President should realize that and issue an apology to the American people and humbly admit that he is more than a citizen of the United States, he is a Black Anglo Saxon Protestant.
Twenty percent of billionaires did not earn a college degree
From Duncan Greenberg, of Forbes:
Want to become a billionaire? Up your chances by dropping out of college, working at Goldman Sachs or joining Skull & Bones.
Are billionaires born or made? What are the common attributes among the uber-wealthy? Are there any true secrets of the self-made?
We get these questions a lot, and decided it was time to go beyond the broad answers of smarts, ambition and luck by sorting through our database of wealthy individuals in search of bona fide trends. We analyzed everything from the billionaires’ parents’ professions to where they went to school, their track records in the early stages of their careers and other experiences that may have put them on the path to extreme wealth…Continue reading Billionaire Clusters>>
