College Endowments in Freefall
Posted on January 27th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »
The Globe has a short piece on the plummeting values of 791 college and university endowments.
(The article, which is an AP story, actually just calls them college endowments, but it seems to include universities as well.)
Living proof of that: Brandeis is closing its art museum and selling its contents.
11 Responses
1/27/2009 8:28 am
So, perhaps colleges and universities will get back to basics.
Get rid of the silly courses that lend virtually nothing to a productive society.
Should universities really run museums? And, if so, how much of those resources aimed at the operation came at the expense of classroom resources?
Love to hear from the ivory tower types.
(Bet SE is the first to respond. The old Boston bet was lunch at Locke Obers but even that is a thing of that past now so will have to figure out a different wager.)
1/27/2009 12:32 pm
Alas, “Back to basics”, you lose. And how far back do you wish academe to go? You appear to define “silly courses” in relation to productivity. If lending something to a productive society is the criterion, then we may have to bid farewell to everything from poetry to cosmology.
1/27/2009 12:50 pm
“Back to basics” exhibits too much contempt for higher education to take seriously as a good-faith interlocutor. Nevertheless, I have to respond to this apparently rhetorical question, “Should universities really run museums?” YES. For many disciplines, the museum IS the classroom.
Dumbass.
1/27/2009 3:14 pm
Anon 12:50, you either signed your post “Dumbass” or you were name calling.
Either way it makes you look like a dumbass.
1/27/2009 6:10 pm
Calling me a dumbass for calling someone else a dumbass is what we in the ivory tower call a “performative contradiction.” Translated into blog-ese, that means “full of FAIL.”
1/27/2009 7:20 pm
I’m going to engage in solipsism, another form of performative contradiction, and pretend you don’t exist. For I fear that you ,and pardon my bluntness while allowing me to translate into a plain blogese, “full of $H!T”. Cheers.
Ivory Tower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The term Ivory Tower originates in the Biblical Song of Solomon and was later used as an epithet for Mary.
From the 19th century it has been, originally ironically, used to designate a world or atmosphere where intellectuals engage in pursuits that are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life. As such, it usually has a pejorative connotation, denoting a willful disconnect from the everyday world; esoteric, over-specialized, or even useless research; and academic elitism, if not outright condescension by those inhabiting the ivory tower. In American English usage it ordinarily denotes the academic world of colleges and universities, particularly scholars of the humanities.
1/27/2009 8:45 pm
I believe the term in the sense in which Anonymous 7:20 uses it finds its origins in “the appearance of the Hawksmoor Towers, twin creamy-white neo-gothic towers at All Souls College, Oxford, the only pure research college at Oxford, epitomize the “ivory tower” of Academe.” (same wikipedia entry)
I spent a wonderful term there in the fall, or should I say Michaelmas, term of 2006, where I worked as a visiting fellow all day long in the Bodleian library, after doing six years before the mast as department chair, five under the five-year presidency of LS. It was not at all disconnected from the everyday world: we were served very fine lunches and dinners that sustained us as we pursued our esoteric, over-specialized (what does that mean?) and even useless research.
Quite so, 12:50, a museum is frequently precisely that, a classroom.
1/28/2009 5:58 pm
WTF…are you guys really this slow? The deal was lunch at Locke Obers. I don’t care what you think just wanted to see if anyone on this site could follow directions. And my guess is that the market place will actually dictate. Students, should the be able to pay for tuition, will enroll in classes that allow them to get a job. Don’t disagree about the poetry etc. But in these times….well, I wish you the best of luck.
1/28/2009 7:02 pm
My department just signed up more sophomore concentrators than they have for some years, not huge numbers but plenty for us. Grad applications also pretty high. Why would the disappearance of i-banks induce more students to think about careers in i-banking? Maybe more will think about getting actual educations, going to Law School, Medical School, graduate school, teaching, etc.
What are the “basics” you are talking about?
1/28/2009 8:16 pm
Math, chemistry, biology, engineering, accounting………………………..
1/28/2009 8:32 pm
That’s it? No history, language, literature, study of how human beings behave? Sounds pretty grim to me, and which university ever did just those things — each of which is admirable and represents one path to a certain sort of career? I think you need to do some reading up about higher education, and to look at what the humans you admire in history thought about between the ages of 18 and 22. Google Keynes for a starter, whether or not you admire him.
The envoi of yesterday’s 12:50 p.m. may be on the mark, but persuade us otherwise.