Category Archives: Money

December 1, 2011, 10:52 pm

Going Postal: A Few Random Thoughts At The End of Term

I was at the Zenith post office today, mailing a large box of books to a former advisee now in his first year of graduate school. As usual, I had to wait in line. Students, who have little access to ordinary household supplies, have a tendency to purchase a box at the post office for whatever they are sending and then pack the box right at the counter. This means that when a personal appearance at the PO is called for, and you don’t feel like driving downtown, it is usually a good idea to bring something to read: each customer ahead of you can take a while to finish up. When I got to the front of the line, the Mistress of Post rang up my shipment at the Media Mail rate, and I held out my debit card. (more…)

November 13, 2011, 4:55 pm

On the Nature of Change in Higher Ed (Part II): Education and the New Economy

By Claire Potter

We return to guest blogger, historian and former Zenith provost Judith C. Brown. Her full biography and Part I of this series can be viewed here. Brown ended the first section of her essay by reflecting: “in the early 19th century, it was in the relative ‘backwater’ of the German universities as well as in the newer universities of Europe, where imagination and flexibility with regard to change were able to flourish, that we see the beginnings of the modern research university.” She then asked: “Are we in that kind of turning point in American higher education?” The answer is yes.

American higher education is at a major turning point. We are in the midst of enormous social, political, economic, and technological changes that are part of big long-term shifts in the economic and political position of the U.S. in the world, shifts that began several decades ago. While the U.S….

December 18, 2010, 3:31 pm

Is There A Budget To Be Cut Under Your Christmas Tree? A View To The Future

By Claire Potter

In yesterday’s Huffpo, David J. Skorton, the president of Cornell University asserted that “We Can Do Better On College Costs.” He proposes calling a halt to the educational blame game: “let’s stop the intellectual shoving matches,” he argues, “and get about the business of dealing with those factors that can and should be controlled to attenuate the rate of rise of both cost and price. And let’s also stop apologizing for investments that are necessary to keep higher education one of America’s premier ‘products.’” His suggestions include:

greater specialization on individual campuses, so that institutions are not duplicating partially filled programs;
reviews of “faculty productivity and quality,” including post-tenure reviews;
acknowledging that educational administrators who are skilled at running an institution might not always have the skills to do so in a cost-efficient way.

The…

August 23, 2010, 12:56 pm

The Annals of Anxiety: Constructing Velcro Parents As A “Problem” For Higher Education

By Claire Potter

This morning I have been thinking about what kinds of criticisms are attached to warnings about cultural decline, and why. For example, our friend Historiann asks today why older people are always so critical of the young. Yeah, why is that? Particularly given the fact that generation after generation, young people seem to grow up into functional workers, consumers, artists, writers and financiers, no matter how much Facebook they do; how many video games they play; and how much/little they read.

Historiann’s emphasis on why cultural critique dominates, at the expense of a more relational view of cultural change and material outcomes, is an interesting corollary to William Julius Wilson’s 2009 reassessment of a sociological school of thought, of which he is a prominent architect, that highlights cultural explanations for Black poverty at the expense of structural analysis. In More…

December 10, 2008, 3:22 pm

Lifeboat: A Conversation About The Incredible Shrinking Budget

By Claire Potter

Yesterday we had a big meeting at Zenith: more members of the faculty attended than at any previous meeting I can recall, except for one about ten years ago when our last newly hired president was introduced. The Radical and several co-conspirators used this unusual quorum to kill a major university committee to which they had been elected. It was a hideous, time-waster of a major committee, one that received institutional problems that no one wanted to do anything about, made recommendations after many circular and ill-informed debates, and saw those recommendations sent to The File That Has No Name by the administrator who had been appointed the boss of us. In retaliation — I mean, response — to this institutional travesty, we secretly devoted our energy, not to issues that were dumped on our doorstep, but to creating a rationale and a strategy for killing the committee. The…

January 14, 2008, 7:35 pm

Money, Money, Money!

By Claire Potter

Today I dug down to the bottom of my holiday mail and found my TIAA-CREF statement. I opened it and — Crap! How did I lose all that money? And then I realized — oh yeah, the real estate investment option, which allowed me to ride through the last stock market free fall, making money all the way, is currently my doom. And now it seems too late to get out, since there was all last quarter and then half of this one when the envelope was just sitting on my desk unopened. I’m thinking I just hang on for a bit, keep the shares, and eventually TIAA-CREF will figure out a better way to make money from real estate than buying packaged securities from mortgage brokers who trick old people and working stiffs out of their life’s saving and equity. All the same, I’m checking in at piggy bank blues to see if she has any advice other than “Open your mail when it arrives, stupid!”