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“A Columbia spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Asked about his affiliation with Kaplan at a fireside chat last week, Bollinger said only that there have been controversies surrounding for-profit universities, and that the issue of profit’s role in higher education is one worth discussing.”

Lalala … to be sure…

Huh? … Fuck off…

So far this is what Columbia University, and its president, have managed by way of response to the scandal of Lee Bollinger remaining on the board of the company that owns one of the most notorious for-profit universities, Kaplan. It’s the same high-handed indifference Bollinger (and, equally notoriously, Berkeley’s Richard Blum) has shown toward the hundreds of thousands of ordinary American grunts being dragged into and ripped off by the schools.

All praise, then, to the students at Columbia for raising a stink about this. They’re eloquent on the subject of Bollinger’s hypocrisy, and they’re trying hard to get him to resign from the board.

The CU Democrats’ petition says that “Kaplan exploits the poor, the vulnerable, and the taxpayer to enrich itself.” As of Monday night, the petition had over 580 signers, some of whom are alumni.

Margaret Soltan, February 22, 2011 5:55AM
Posted in: CLICK-THRU U.

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2 Responses to ““A Columbia spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Asked about his affiliation with Kaplan at a fireside chat last week, Bollinger said only that there have been controversies surrounding for-profit universities, and that the issue of profit’s role in higher education is one worth discussing.””

  1. Michael McNabb, Attorney Says:
    February 22nd, 2011 at 6:04PM

    Many non-profit institutions of higher education are taking on the attributes of for-profit business ventures. See Jennifer Washburn’s groundbreaking book entitled University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (New York, Basic Books 2005) and her January 2011 article in Academe magazine. (There is a link to her article in Professor William Gleason’s February 19 post in The Periodic Table at http://ptable.blogspot.com/2011/02/academic-freedom-and-corporate.html#links.)

  2. University Diaries » How Awkward for Berkeley. How Awkward for Senator Feinstein. Says:
    February 27th, 2014 at 8:45AM

    […] dean’s starring performance in Inside Job. Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, sits on the board of the company that owns Kaplan. Students there were so disgusted by this that they started a petition calling for him to leave the […]

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