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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

The Combination of an Impeccable Argument
and a First-Rate Writing Style Will Always
Get You Where You Want to Go...




...as this stellar opinion piece in today's Inside Higher Ed demonstrates. The writer is so good that even though he's too emotional (being too emotional is poison when arguing anything) it doesn't matter. Polemically, he's completely in the right, and stylistically I just want to kiss him.

Let us see how he makes UD/SOS adore him.

On April 11, the president of Columbia University announced that it had received a $400 million pledge from alumnus John W. Kluge, who in 2006 was 52nd on the Forbes list of the wealthiest people, earning his fortune through the buying and selling of television and radio stations. This gift, payable upon the 92-year-old’s death, will be the fourth largest ever given to a single institution of higher education.


Emotional, you say? The man's a data machine! Well, hold on. He knows he can't hit you up with his anger just yet. He's got to run some numbers by you. And $400 million. That's a big one.

With such a massive transfer of wealth, the accolades poured in, justifying such a gift to an Ivy League university. Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, said: “The essence of America’s greatness lies, in no small measure, in our collective commitment to giving all people the opportunity to improve their lives… [Kluge] has chosen to direct his amazing generosity to ensuring that young people will have the chance to benefit from a Columbia education regardless of their wealth or family income.” Mayor Michael Bloomberg indicated that investing in education produces returns that can’t be matched. Rep. Charles Rangel said the gift would ensure greater numbers of students can afford a first-class education.


Laying it on even more thick here. Taking a risk, too, because he's about to argue that this form of philanthropy isn't philanthropy at all, but the rankest bullshit. Yes, yes, everyone's happy, and what a wonderful thing to give all that money to a university like Columbia...

Next paragraph only has one line, and a short one at that:

Oh please!


Goody, goody. Now we get down to it. Hold on tight.

I am becoming less and less tolerant of people who pass wealth on to the privileged and masquerade it as philanthropy. Philanthropy is the voluntary act of donating money, goods or services to a charitable cause, intended to promote good or improve human well being. When a billionaire gives money that will benefit people who are more than likely already well off or who already have access to huge sums of money, attending the ninth richest university by endowment, this is not philanthropy. This simply extends the gross inequities that exist in our country — inequities that one day will come home to roost. [Sure, come home to roost is a cliche. I don't care. I love him. I forgive him.]

Almost 40 percent of all college students nationally earned a Pell Grant, which in general represents students from families earning less than $35,000 a year. Yes, almost 40 percent of students in college today are from low income families. At Columbia, where tuition and fees alone tops $31,000, only 16 percent of students are Pell Grant eligible. In fact, over 60 percent of Columbia students don’t even bother to apply for federal financial aid. They can pay the bill — no problem (see the Economic Diversity of Colleges Web site). Columbia is not alone. A recent New York Times article, which provided a great story on a recent Amherst College graduate, indicated that 75 percent of students attending elite colleges come from the top socioeconomic quartile, while only 10 percent come from the bottom half, and just 3 percent from the bottom quartile.

For comparison, 83 percent of my students received the Pell Grant during that same year, and 84 percent applied for financial aid. Even with tuition and fees less than $9,000 a year, my students on average will leave college with MORE debt than Columbia students, in fact $11,000 more even though tuition and fees are $22,000 a year less! [Yes, UD SPEETS on the exclamation mark. I don't care. I forgive him. I love him.]

I am hopeful that Columbia will do as it states it will, which is to expand the number of scholarship grants to needy students. President Bollinger has been a strong advocate for affirmative action, and I am very hopeful because he has shown great integrity. But even assuming that Columbia spends the money on aid, and that it couldn’t spend more of its existing money on poor students, not to mention admitting more of them, the university’s current campaign has a goal of $1 billion for facilities – that’s an astronomical sum of “philanthropy” to help a wealthy institution have better facilities. And Columbia isn’t alone — as there are similarly ambitious spending plans by the other public and private universities currently seeking to raise billions of dollars.


The writer goes on to note that the situation isn't much better at public universities, that in both private and public universities the trend is toward the shutting out of truly needy students and toward a concentration of wealthy students. He continues:

America’s so-called philanthropists ignore these facts, and we continue to laud their generosity to the privileged. At the same time, people of color continue to fall further and further behind, and unless we begin to help those who actually need help, America’s economy will suffer.
Fat, over-endowed universities with well-off students and a few less well-off keep struggling populations down, and make social unrest and economic instability more likely.

Conclusion:

Our political leaders must begin to challenge the wealthy to practice real philanthropy. They should be encouraged to give gifts that will benefit a greater number of people with real need (most of their constituents), versus a wealthy minority ... It is time for us to restore the integrity of philanthropy, and call gifts to the wealthy what they really are — the perpetuation of privilege.


It all reminds me of the Larry Ellison/Harvard University dustup a few months ago, when everyone got all upset because Larry was going to give hundreds of millions to Harvard (current endowment close to thirty billion dollars) but then decided not to. Oh please.

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