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[jonesey]

you lost all credibility by mentioning the fact that a tape of Wesley Cook aka Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted cop killer, was played at an Antioch commencement.

I don't think this is fair.  Many peple think that Mumia is "obviously" guilty, others think that he is obviously not.  The latter will naturally consider his treatment in the justice system extremely barbaric and a blight on the system, the former will consider it correct and evidence that the system works.  I'm in the habit of ignoring both sorts of arguments, and treating them as a kind of religion on the part of the adherents; just because someone says they are a {insert a religion you think is wacky here}, that doesn't mean they are not rational outside the narrow scope of their faith. - DvF

True, but it's still grossly inappropriate to have this sort of polarizing, fringe political BS at a commencement. 

[daniel_von_flanagan]

True, but it's still grossly inappropriate to have this sort of polarizing, fringe political BS at a commencement. 

Politicization of commencement is a fact of life, and begins the day commencement speakers are chosen.
In this case, however, that wasn't the issue, but rather whether to dismiss the poster's other arguments because (s)he also happened to have this belief about Mumia.  - DvF

[zharkov]

 It's unfortunate and disheartening to hear in a forum of higher education, presumably frequented by the most educated minds, that people deserve to be discarded because the university couldnt meet the bottom line.  Is marketing and economics more important than the futures of those who worked so hard to teach mathmatics and botany and art.

The answer is:  All of the above.

A liberal arts college needs to excel in teaching math, arts, etc.  and also has to  watch the bottom line, do its marketing right, and not think they are immune to basic economics.

Although my heart is with Antioch College and many progressive causes, I think that progressives, in general, do a lousy job when they actually try to run things.  Perhaps extreme ideology of any kind deludes people in to making believe that economics doesn't apply.

[jonesey]

I think that progressives, in general, do a lousy job when they actually try to run things.  Perhaps extreme ideology of any kind deludes people in to making believe that economics doesn't apply.

I agree.  For whatever reason, business/accounting departments seem to be, primarily, conservative in nature, in essense if not actually in fact.  This is unfortunate for so many reasons, but what to do?  Can you see a rally at, say, Berkeley or Antioch where the slogan isn't "Save the Trees" but, rather, "We Need More CPAs?" 

[mgibbons19]

I can't believe religion and Mumai are the currents of thought on this thread.

If you can't pay your bills, you're toast. Period. All the wrangling about open mindedness and holding on to principles that the student in the article mentions is useless if you can't pay your bills.

Compromise your identity for better marketing? Um yeah. Isn't it obvious?

Because now they don't even have a college in which to entertain their identity.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

I can't believe religion and Mumai are the currents of thought on this thread.

If you can't pay your bills, you're toast. Period. All the wrangling about open mindedness and holding on to principles that the student in the article mentions is useless if you can't pay your bills.

Compromise your identity for better marketing? Um yeah. Isn't it obvious?

One point of jean gregorek's post, however - for anyone who can see past the Mumia stuff - is that Antioch was fulfilling its core mission very well, and what felled it was prioritizing away from the college on the part of its marketer bosses in the wider University. - DvF

[zharkov]

I can't believe religion and Mumai are the currents of thought on this thread.

If you can't pay your bills, you're toast. Period. All the wrangling about open mindedness and holding on to principles that the student in the article mentions is useless if you can't pay your bills.

Compromise your identity for better marketing? Um yeah. Isn't it obvious?

One point of jean gregorek's post, however - for anyone who can see past the Mumia stuff - is that Antioch was fulfilling its core mission very well, and what felled it was prioritizing away from the college on the part of its marketer bosses in the wider University. - DvF

I'd interpret the relation between the liberal arts college and the wider university somewhat differently......

At one time, continuing ed and satellite operations were huge cash cows for many colleges and universities.  That is, these "wider operations" subsidized the core college.  That economic model has changed over the past 10 or 15 years, and although most colleges receive a positive cash flow from the "wider operations," they are not the cash cows they were at one time.  I suspect that the powers that be at Antioch didn't wise up to the change in the economic model until it was much too late.

[bobbogen]

Keyes post in the CHRONICLE, [July 20],  goes far beyond the current letter of former Antioch Trustees.

The former Antioch trustees letter to the current Board of Trustees is sstill inadequate if a major contribution and response to the surprising avalanche of national press coverage [though the George Will diatribe only confirms the dancing of glee expected from the corporate establishment] as well as the encouraging plethora of alumni and other reactions to the shock of the current college crisis.

I expect few of my vintage Antiochians give much of a damn about the McGregor operation or the other satellites. Nice but largely irrelevant.  Sure, those of our age remember Douglas McGregor as president.  But the college is the heart of Antioch, as the leading educator, college president of Bard College, Leon Botstein said, “It is the founding college of the American progressive movement.”    The college is the problem, as well as the essential venue of the solution.

Almost all of the thousands of words about the current crisis focuses on dollars, very American I suppose.  Almost nothing in all the whining and outrage deals with the more basic problem.  Only the nasty and ignorant letters to editors across Ohio and the nation as well as the George Will told-you-so piece even hint at the crucial issue.

Neither release of the current $30,000,000 endowment [surely due to the college] through legal action over the next several years, nor the proposed increase to a $100,000,000 endowment, nor a couple of million in current contributions will solve the essential problem.  Those non-endowment contributions may help with all the deferred maintenance, though such contributions and repairs only preserve options for possible reopening, and in fact may not be given unless the more basic question of reopening can be answered in the affirmative with some confidence.

The grotesque over-expansion to dozens of satellite operations decades ago surely distracted from vital attention to the viable and sustainable operation of the college.  The current operational insolvency must surely be seen as a result of the more basic tragedy. 

Despite dark conspiracy hints of national government black operations through some non-alumni military-industrial complex related members of the Board of Trustees, more likely problems of critical recent college circumstances are at least hinted at in the New York Times OpEd  column of a fairly recent graduate [June 17], the pathetic rant of Los Angeles Times columinist Megan Daum, [June 30], and the devastating extended account of the highly informed, on the scene over recent years alumni, Ralph Keyes in the CHRONICLE, Present At The Demise: Antioch College, 1852-2008.   
 
Sure money can help, but the underlying problem is the collapse in enrollment and resulting decimation of tuition income on which the college lives, or dies.  Enrollment must be at least tripled or no other action can succeed, short of a George Soros billion dollar gift.  And a key trustee tells me George has already said he is not interested.
Then why did alums and other informed parents and grandparents of my era not send their offspring to Antioch?   Forget about the specifics of author Daum’s attack on Womyn at Antioch, the Times writer and Keyes hit the nail on its painful head. 

The college has been grotesquely out of control since it was given over to unqualified students without adequate staff to prevent/mitigate the chaos.  The Rockefeller grant funds were totally mismanaged, not adequately apportioned to staff capable of managing the campus, if that was indeed possible with the students admitted with those funds.

There was a time when Antioch accepted one out of ten applicants.  When I ask what is the current/recent ratio of acceptances, the result is laughter.  Similarly, it might be useful to know what the College Board score averages are now.  Somehow a way must be found to increase applicants so Admissions can find students appropriate to the Antioch program.  This is not just a question of finding more Rockefeller etc scholarships.   First the chaos must end. 

In practical terms and public perception terms [including perceptions of potential students] this may well require that the current student body must be considered expendable. Tough love may be the only approach to Antioch survival.  Perhaps that is the unspoken judgment of the Board of Trustees, with their four year closing. That is not a solution, but may be the essential first step, based on the first hand reports of the New York Times writer and Keyes.

The absolutely crucial next step is the re-creation of the reasons many thousands of appropriate students applied to Antioch in decades past.  My fellow grads surely hold the keys.  Effort and/or money must be devoted to such an urgent survey.  Results will include various distinctive appeals of Antioch education.  Some are:
1] Based on the extraordinary press and educational establishment response to the current crisis and the success of the satellite university operations, Antioch is still a national [world?] brand name of enormous power; 
2] The long track-record of the highly sophisticated Antioch liberal arts work-study program may now have some competition [another, small research project], but it is still a major draw; 
3] The Antioch faculty-student administrative and judicial council system was a significant plus for many of us [I believe it was Arthur Morgan who observed the American movement for Choice Voting as an essential element of urban government reform in the 1920s, and accelerating across other American universities and cities now, 80 years later;
4] A phenomenal student body, drawn to these three and other qualities;
5] Perhaps only next, the academic education itself [enriched by the other four elements, and which elements also attracted a highly qualified faculty] and impressively demonstrated by high academic results in Graduate Record Exams and other alumni performance [I understand number 3 in McArthur Foundation genius awards and impressive awards even in science];
6] An attractive campus, Glen Helen, and a small, appealing college town. 

Such a survey/research should include quotable/brief personal stories of grads about their experience, how it lifted their life, and even their fulfillment of Horace Mann’s dictum.

My wife and I, as well as many classmates we have followed, found our life roles absolutely transformed by our Antioch experience, to enable manifestation of Horace Mann’s challenge in our public service careers and public policy activism.  Our four children did not attend, were not encourage to enter the chaos of Antioch in their era, but now, well into their very different careers, they have also fulfilled that vision, likely stimulated by Antiochian second-hand ‘smoke.’  But we have to regret giving to each alumni fund drive when it now appears we were only Twelve Step style Enablers, postponing recognition of the unsustainable chaos that we must now face and hope to rebuild Antioch in a dying world that cries out for aware, educated, and involved citizens to push a return to constructive/democratic action.

Leon Botstein, also said in response to last month’s news, Antioch is, “a great, historic institution... [its closing would be] an unnecessary tragedy."   He also points out the special, under-girding mission of Antioch has been training graduates in leadership for participation in democracy, which he says is the basic justification for liberal education.

Bob K. Bogen

[zharkov]

Sure money can help, but the underlying problem is the collapse in enrollment and resulting decimation of tuition income on which the college lives, or dies.  Enrollment must be at least tripled or no other action can succeed, short of a George Soros billion dollar gift. 

I expect that Antioch College has a breakeven point of roughly 1000 to 1200 students, and at one time, has a higher enrollment than that.

Here is what I don't get:  When enrollment declined to 1200, to 1000, to 750, to 500, and even below that, why didn't the alarm bells go off?

Where the entire administration and board of trustees clueless about the underlying economics for a stretch of 10 years? 

[dr_stones]

Jesus would not smirk is all I am saying.  Not the smirky sort.

Jesus had to have smirked.  Perhaps right after he got all rightous and drove the moneychangers from the Temple with a strap.

[dr_stones]

Here is what I don't get:  When enrollment declined to 1200, to 1000, to 750, to 500, and even below that, why didn't the alarm bells go off?

Where the entire administration and board of trustees clueless about the underlying economics for a stretch of 10 years? 

Zhark, the impression I get is that Antioch was sop busy describing stuff, they forgot how to measure stuff.

Or they saw it as improving the student-to-faculty ratio.

[csguy]

Here is what I don't get:  When enrollment declined to 1200, to 1000, to 750, to 500, and even below that, why didn't the alarm bells go off?

Where the entire administration and board of trustees clueless about the underlying economics for a stretch of 10 years? 

Zhark, the impression I get is that Antioch was sop busy describing stuff, they forgot how to measure stuff.

Or they saw it as improving the student-to-faculty ratio.

They were focused on the expansion campuses.

In any case. This kind of downward spiral can be tough to pull out of.

[kaysixteen]

Which, when combined with their ongoing efforts at developing their expansion campus, suggests that at least some Antioch trustees and donors had in mind all along elimination of the core Ohio campus....

[dr_stones]

Markets.

Did they teach about markets at Antioch?

[invinoveritas]

There seems to be a blantant ignorance of a little something called 'the fact/value distinction' on this thread recently.  Practicality is not the ultimate virtue and decider of all matters.  There is often a difference between what is and what should be.  While I am not in full agreement with everything 'Antiochish', I applaud its defenders.  This issue is primarily ethical, not economic.