UD lives in the richest, most highly educated location in the world.

The most spoiled, too. Even though many of us in the Washington DC region have plenty of money, all of the Smithsonian museums — arguably the best collection of museums in the world — are free. (Just one New York museum – the Guggenheim – costs eighteen bucks. MOMA’s twenty.)

The Smithsonians, the Guggenheims — these places, like universities, are considered public goods, worthy of government support in the form of things like direct funding, or tax-deductible donations, or other goodies. (An article in the Economist magazine worries about whether the escalating commercialization of American museums will threaten the fact that they “fall under a category of non-profit organisation that is tax-exempt and that qualifies for charitable giving.”)

The Smithsonians are mostly tax-supported (though their come-and-go exhibits aren’t), and the Guggenheims much less so, but both are non-profits; and there’s a profound, delicate, and complex understanding in this country that the non-profits among us — places like museums and universities — stand above the merely material world, have to do with higher things, represent not merely monetary but civilizational values, and therefore must be especially cherished by us all. Special exceptions must be made for them; they are worthy recipients of special forms of support.

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How much of this instinct toward cherishing non-profits like universities is sentiment, and how much substance?

An important question. Yet people who defend the non-profit nature of universities tend to be merely sentimental, rather than substantive, in defending their higher, civilizational claims.

For instance, Stanley Fish, in his latest blog post, expresses fury at a recent report out of England arguing for greater privatization of universities and a greater emphasis on preparing students for a vocation. Fish rails against the report’s “relentless monetization of everything in sight… [V]alue now means return on the dollar; quality of life now means the number of cars or houses you can buy; a civilized society is a society where the material goods a society offers can be enjoyed by more people.” He continues:

The logic is the logic of privatization. Higher education is no longer conceived of as a public good — as a good the effects of which permeate society — but is rather a private benefit, and as such it should be supported by those who enjoy the benefit… [C]ivilization, as far as one can see, will have to take care of itself .

This all sounds great; but what matters is what people see. When they see Fish – who last I looked boasted of driving a Jaguar convertible, and is famous for having attracted big names to Duke University’s English department by throwing huge sums of money at them and giving them little in the way of teaching responsibilities – do they see the reasonably distanced attitude toward materialism that his pro-civilization rhetoric suggests?

What do people see? Duke, and UD‘s GW, are both fine universities; but what do people see?

When you walk into the largest, most public building at George Washington University, where UD teaches, a big tv screen greets you. On it, the latest Hollywood gossip blares. It’s inescapable. The sound fills up the lobby.

So… Say you’re a taxpayer assured by Stanley Fish and others that universities are precious conservators of civilization. But your immediate experience of this university is no different from your experience in the back of a taxicab that has a tv screen staring you in the face when you enter, blaring the latest Hollywood gossip.

If universities are going to be treated as different, they need to be careful that what they present to the world differentiates itself from the world.

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The current focus on the scandal of government support for rip-off for-profit schools is drawing attention to the civilizational integrity, if you will, of the non-profits. The only argument lobbyists for the for-profits have going for them is that many non-profit universities are just as scummy as they are, and they get federal support! Why shouldn’t the for-profits?

Too true. Too true. What’s University Diaries been telling you all these years? If your non-profit university is as much of a joke as the for-profits, you should be slammed just as hard as they’re about to get slammed. If you give your president millions in compensation, graduate few students, give most of your money to athletics, hoard your endowment, stuff your boards of trustees with hedge fund managers or corrupt local merchants, put most of your courses online and make remaining on-campus courses gigantic lectures no one attends, have ghostwritten industry flacks among your researchers — If you are, in other words, a seriously anti-intellectual, seriously money-grubbing sort of jobbie, you’re doing fuck-all for civilization, and no self-respecting government should have anything to do with you.

… for Inside Higher Education. Title: MARK MADOFF’S POSTMODERN SUICIDE.

… you can hear Tom Harkin being very indignant indeed about the scummy for-profit schools of America.

“A very sick industry.”

Harkin seems particularly scandalized by the involvement of hedge fund people in these schools. Someone should show him who’s running Brown University. And Yeshiva University.

…Hm. He seems to be under the impression that online is the poor white trash of education… He’s scathing on the subject.

I seem to be live-blogging this.

Can’t remember the exact number, but Harkin also seemed struck by the fact that the prez of some for-profit university or other made, what, fourteen billion times what the prez of Harvard makes. Something like that. Thirteen billion…

Ooh. Richard Durbin’s pissed too. For-profits rip off veterans, too. Veterans default and the schools don’t teach them shit. “How can it be fair for this kind of exploitation to continue?…. This is an absolutely unexplainable, indefensible situation!”

Harkin: “Used to be fifty percent of your students had to be campus-based. That ended in 2005. Now you’ve got the entire student body online! And look at the online dropout rates!”

Harkin: “These days a semester’s anything you want it to be. Some of these schools have semesters that are five weeks long! Keep ’em just long enough to be able to keep the money!”

Harkin: “Their mission is to grow and get profits at the expense of students… It’s the obligation of us here to provide effective government oversight and regulation… Are taxpayers dollars being used effectively?… I have grave doubts that these schools are a good taxpayer investment.”

From a BBC interview:

‘He lived for being in government and doing things… He really put together all the elements of diplomacy. And he produced results…

He was sympathetic. He understood people have difficulties.’

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Tudjman, UD, and La Kid,

visiting Peter in Croatia, 1993.

The Jewish Week is unhappy with something Henry Kissinger said in 1973 to Richard Nixon — a comment now made public by the Nixon Library.

The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.

The ADL, though, doesn’t mind.

Hitchens.

… with whom UD‘s old friend Peter Galbraith worked on the peace accord when Peter was ambassador to Croatia, has died.

Peter always described Holbrooke as so hard-nosed a character that UD wondered how the two of them – Peter and Holbrooke – could be in a room together without the room imploding.

So applaud these University of Manchester students for having read all of Milton’s Paradise Lost aloud. Proceeds will go to the Royal National Institute of Blind People.

Here’s more information.

James Fallows, in The Atlantic:

… Peter Orszag, until recently the director of the Office of Management and Budget under Barack Obama, [will] join Citibank in a senior position. Exactly how much it will pay is not clear, but informed guesses are several million dollars per year. Citibank, of course, was one of the institutions most notably dependent on federal help to survive in these past two years.

… The idea that someone would help plan, advocate, and carry out an economic policy that played such a crucial role in the survival of a financial institution — and then, less than two years after his Administration took office, would take a job that (a) exemplifies the growing disparities the Administration says it’s trying to correct and (b) unavoidably will call on knowledge and contacts Orszag developed while in recent public service — this says something bad about what is taken for granted in American public life…

This blog focuses on growing university disparities – executive compensation, athletics funding – but it’s good to keep in mind the larger picture of a nation bankrupting itself through cynicism and greed.

From a New York Times article titled In New Jersey, A Backlog of Governor’s Nominees Await Confirmation:

… About 140 of the [New Jersey] governor’s appointments remain in limbo, awaiting Senate action, and most have not been taken up in committee, the step before a full Senate vote. Dozens date back to last spring: election supervisors, department administrators and, most of all, board members of assorted colleges and agencies.

… [At] the scandal-plagued University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, installing like-minded board members was crucial to his plans for agency overhaul…

UMDNJ. The only university in America with rolling prison admissions.

From Scotland’s The Herald.

While ghostwriting isn’t exactly a well kept secret in any industry, we wonder if [AMD, a semiconductor company, is] upset over the horrible trash published in [its executives’] names. We would be.

TechEye

From The Copenhagen Post:

An Aalborg University professor and at least three other men and one woman have been caught on tape holding a steamy orgy on campus.

[T]he professor has organised several orgies in a university machine room …

[F]our men [wear] monk robes while having sex with [a] woman.

… The recorded orgy is said to show the participants carefully preparing the room and equipment for an hour leading up to the encounter. Afterwards the room is cleaned up and all traces of the activity are removed.

… [U]niversity rector Finn Kjærsdam [said:] “[W]e’re responsible for all university facilities, and we cannot and will not have things like that going on here.”

… Bracing for a $15 million deficit, the university released $14.8 million in budget cuts for Fiscal Year 2012[.] $5.4 million came from academics and academic support, while $136,000 came from athletics.

Since then, Southern Miss also has announced a $35,000 salary increase for head football coach Larry Fedora from $650,000 to $685,000 yearly.

Meanwhile, 29 faculty members stand to lose their jobs next year…

Hattiesburg American

You and I have tracked many American fakes over the years — people running around with pretend diplomas or no diplomas — and we have been impressed by the willingness of just as many American universities to overlook their fakery. Why check credentials?

Thus Western Michigan University hired William Hamman – broad-shouldered pilot of jumbo jets, MD, AND PhD! – to direct its couldn’t-be-better-named Center of Excellence for Simulation Research.

Hamman simulated being an MD and a PhD so excellently that many other organizations – the American College of Cardiology, the American Medical Association, yadda yadda, gave Hamman high-paid gigs to do his thing, which seems to be using what he learned as a pilot on doctors… I dunno. Doesn’t matter….

So, you know, finally after years and years the hospital where he worked checked up on the guy:

In checking a grant proposal he wanted to submit in late spring, the [hospital] staff discovered the lack of an M.D. degree… [Nor did he have the] fellowship, doctoral degree or the 15 years of clinical experience he claimed.

Muy grande liar! I like the way he threw in a PhD. What the hell.

… Smokey Robinson.

Kennedy Center Honors, 2010.

Click on the photo for a larger view.