The Economy Is Tanking; Campus Construction Unaffected!
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that despite the rest of the world’s economic slump, college remains just one really large bubble separated from the outside world, as campus construction projects continue to be built, irregardless of sub-prime mortgage crises, a weakening dollar, or rising energy costs.
At Ithaca College, at least, you can see this in action perfectly, despite the ever increasing price of gas, tuition, and life in general. (not to mention student loans!) There’s a building under construction, another one just finished, and yet another site of empty land on campus being prepared for a multi-million dollar athletics center. It’s construction on steroids.
According to the article, colleges are actually hurrying to finish projects before construction costs shoot up astronomically, at which point, they’ll probably just pass on the costs to students! Yay!
“We’ve been projecting significant construction-cost escalations for the past several years,” said Michael E. McKay, Princeton University’s vice president for facilities, “and unfortunately we’ve been right.”
Well, there’ll certainly be a lot of shiny new buildings sitting on perfectly manicured quads … but don’t expect any middle class students to be in them! (Except rich, rich schools like Harvard. They can afford to educate the middle class.)
Ithaca College to install public alert system, siren
Dave Maley, Ithaca College’s associate director of media relations, confirmed last night that the college will be installing two public address systems as an added precautionary measure in case of an on-campus emergency.
Maley said the public address systems will consist of two large speakers/sirens that will be installed on top of the Campus Center and on the Terrace Dining Hall. The college will be able to activate a loud siren noise, play a pre-recorded voice message, or simply speak to the campus through a microphone. It’ll be audible to students even in their dorm rooms.
Maley said this will allow the college to reach more people than it is currently able to with the text message/phone alert system.
According the the Chronicle, more than a dozen other colleges have installed sirens or announced plans to do so in the past year, citing the flaws in a text message or phone alert system. The systems cost more than $100,000 to purchase and set up, the paper said.
UPDATE 3/2: Cornell University recently installed 4 sirens on several buildings around its campus, at a total cost of $250,000. The sirens should be up and running by the end of this week, the Cornell Sun reports.
Financial Aid: The Opus
If you haven’t already, go ahead and read Munzer?s article in The Ithacan, and the editorial written today about the financial aid situation. Pay close attention to how tricky it is for a school like Ithaca. We?ll come back to this in a little.
We’ve seen a major financial aid overhaul get through Congress, and get signed by the President. It’s a nice idea, but it’s flawed. And it’s already a little too late, based on some recent announcements from big-name colleges. Its merits are good, no doubt. It attempts to add to the value of Pell Grant. (Although here?s an interesting question: Why are the funds authorized for 2013 only $105 million? By the by, over the 10 years there?s an average of $2.87 billion additional appropriated each year.) And it brings up this TEACH grant to help out current and prospective teachers.
Curiously, there?s nothing in there overhauling financial aid that will take care of the long (and largely unnecessary) process that is the FAFSA. In fact, the only time it?s even mentioned in the mile-long bill is under the College Access Challenge Grant Program, where help with the application is covered as a payment with the grant. Hm.
Thoughts on Loans and Financial Aid
Sorry for the long delay in posting, even though I know I’m not the only one reeling from all the work that has to be submitted before finals week (something to do with that Dec. 25 final grade submission… Thanks Registrar!) A little something meta on the blogs: We have a new comments policy that our commenters should all be aware of, so acquaint yourself with it. Now onto the important stuff:
A wolf in (Oregon) duck’s clothing: There’s this loan group from Florida that’s gotten into a lot of trouble from New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo. He’s investigated a bunch of other loan companies earlier this year for their dubious actions, which include cash for friend referrals and signups, but the most recent group, Student Financial Services, has been using team names, logos and mascots for their marketing to students.
Apparently not all universities keep the rights to their mascots, but have them through an intermediary group, so that’s how this loan company was able to use the marks (maybe that’s how Washburn University got an eerily similar logo to U. of Wisconsin?).? The Times reported that at least 17 have since suspended their arrangements with the group, and the Chronicle is reporting that the remainder, 63 in total, are also cutting their ties. Cuomo is also reportedly was working with the company to make an agreement so they don’t have to pay a penalty ? instead, they’ll have a code of conduct developed by the attorney general’s office.
Recapping other loan stuff: Munzer got to it earlier this week, but this Harvard financial aid thing is only the latest in universities taking financial aid into their own hands. In the middle of last month, the Chronicle (pay-walled) reported on three colleges in the Northeast that are doing away with loans for students. Williams College is getting rid of loans entirely from its financial aid packages, and Colby and Wesleyan are doing similar things to reduce their burdens.
The Harvard situation is merely an extension of their 2004 initiative to help those coming from lower economic backgrounds in staying in college. It’s a wonderful idea, and while I question the need for such deep discounts to the children of six-figure breadwinners, solving the cost problem is an issue the industry needs to answer ? and they’ve been terrible about doing so.
There are good reasons why college costs so much, especially here (something about the first major capital campaign in a 116-year history…). Some colleges, like Williams, are doing smart things. Even at Ithaca, students rise the the occasion, such as the HEOP program with Lobby Day [disclosure: I worked for Academic Enrichment Services last year]. When students get into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt when they graduate with degrees in English or Outdoor Adventure Leadership, it’s a pretty scary situation. Or, they don’t even make it past their first semester here. And when college seems to be the prerequisite and no longer an honor, it needs to become more affordable.
Something completely different: Can Antioch stop losing steam? There’s now a plan being set in motion to separate Antioch College from the associated university system to address the many issues that plague the institution. At first glance it sounds like a terrible idea, considering that the whole system started with the undergrad program. While I’m sure the Antioch College Continuation Corporation would have the college’s best interests at heart, especially with some very passionate people ? who wouldn’t give money when the agreement to save Antioch was penned last month ?? it moves the burden off the current administration of the Antioch in a dangerous way. Furthermore, it doesn’t help that as of Tuesday, the payment agreement made last month is no longer in effect [via Chronicle]. And what’s worse, if the transfer does happen, it’s most likely the school will have to get accreditation, since it won’t be the old Antioch.
Is Ithaca one of the nation’s ‘ugliest’ colleges?
OH NO YOU DIDN’T! Ithaca College just got some Hate-erade dumped all over it.
Some dinky blog called the Campus Squeeze, which proudly describes itself as “not just any college Web site,” has pronounced our admittedly aesthetically-challenged campus the 17th ugliest of any college in the United States. Now, I don’t have any serious issues with this proclamation, because let’s face it, there are some uggggly buildings on our pretty ‘lil campus.
But these guys obviously didn’t look at every single school to make their decision - they just decided to check out some colleges’ Web sites, asked students to bash colleges on their message boards, and then made a blanket, uninformed statement about beauty, which as we all know, is a very subjective thing. Then they wrote it all down in a big, annoying list.
The dude who writes the piece says that he’s “extremely unimpressed” by our campus and that it “pales” next to Cornell. Yeah, sure, we’ve got a lot of gray, brick-shaped buildings, but c’mon, at least we’re trying now. I blame 60’s architecture, personally.
(College Ave. thanks Tipster Krar for the link. )
Roundup: Under Fire Edition
Presidents not doing so hot: Lee C. Bollinger and Richard Roberts, of Columbia University and Oral Roberts University, respectively, are not doing well by the eyes of the faculty they lead. For Bollinger, more than 100 faculty members signed a statement of concern raising issues with the way he’s running the school and that Iranian visit from September. Roberts had the faculty raise a vote of no-confidence ? especially troubling since he went on leave last month and is being accused of using the school’s money for political gain and gifts for his family. There’s also a dean at Washington University in St. Louis who the faculty is looking to remove.
More about presidents and their money: The Chronicle’s annual report on presidential salaries (”Executive Compensation”) is out, and it shows increases are bigger for the larger institutions. The median salary is above $500,000 for those at large, research institutions, and troublingly low sums for community college presidents. Again you may get rebuffed by the pay wall, but it’s worth it to make comparisons between different colleges.
As for Ithaca? Peggy R. Williams makes $254,040, and benefits raise the total compensation near $300K ($291,195). In comparison, the top earner, Boca Raton, Fla. Lynn University president Donald E. Ross makes more than $5.5 million, and Williams is nestled between presidents from Manhattanville College and Molloy College. Fun fact: Molloy College is running their own capital campaign! Their goal is much more modest, only between $7 and $10 million.
Trolling elsewhere? Treasure Troll, the former Ithaca OTR blogger is out. It was his decision to go after the mess I started, and it appears a lot of what I linked to is now dust in the wind. I hope he’s moving over to Buzzsaw’s blog, which covers an interesting array of topics but has been MIA for a while.
The trouble with blogging anonymity
There’s this new “network” of student-written blogs about campus. Called College OTR (too cool to spell out On-The-Record, or just figure people wouldn’t write it out), it allows students to blog about their campus. They have more than 30 colleges as part of their network, ranging from the Ivies to big schools like Penn State, and schools that have rich students, like us.
The feel of the site is very wannabe-Gawker media, except for students who don’t necessarily know they aren’t snarky. There are tons of problems with this model, mainly stemming from a lack of control over who’s writing. They allow not just anonymous comments, but anonymous bloggers too. In fact, I was alerted ? via our campus OTR, “Ithaca OTR” ? that a student at the University of Michigan was forced from his post at the Michigan Daily because of his anonymous blogging on the site.
As a sidenote: If you’ve never heard College OTR, it makes sense. We only have one person on our campus blogging there (good news: you can join, too!).
But oh that one blogger.
I’ve been reading Ithaca OTR for a couple of weeks; it got on my radar during the Dean Lynch thing. Going by the handle Treasure Troll, the blogger wrote scathing reviews of some Ithacan articles, the Ithaca Cheesesteak Emporium, and worked some snark on our fabled Intercom Roundups. My thought was that I’d let yipping dogs lie ? despite him calling The Ithacan’s blogs “lame” ? and hoped it would kind of blow over.
I was also hoping someone would get to the bottom of this and identify the blogger. There were some clues about who it could be ? someone obsessed with Park (writing about and putting down the dean) ? but no leads.
Well, he’s been identified. An anonymous commenter posted identifying information about the blogger on his own blog ? the gall! ? and forced him to come out. Who is it? Senior Mike Berlin. Don’t know him? He’s an editor at Buzzsaw Haircut and (perhaps more importantly) Fuse, the propaganda prospective student quarterly.
So here’s the thing. I don’t really care that he bashed The Ithacan. It comes with the territory. My immediate thought was this: Will he continue to cut down everybody? Or is it all about to get really tame?
High-profile anonymous bloggers have been unmasked before. Most famously, Fake Steve Jobs turned out to be a Forbes reporter, and in the case of Fake Steve, he keeps on rolling despite everybody knowing the true persona. That’s gutsy, but not everybody can do that.
Can Berlin do it? It looks already like he’s lost his bite. He avidly promoted Buzzsaw, and probably wants to keep that gig with Fuse.
Oh, and as for Berlin being recognized at some party? I was there; my sources tell me it was nobody special, just some lame blogger.
Dean Lynch Part Tres
Good news! The traditional media-o-sphere (doesn’t quite roll off the tongue the same way) has finally blown up over this Berkeley thing. The San Fransisco Chronicle started today with a buried story about her on B3, and then the Merc picked it up a few hours ago. Now Poynter’s got it, and the San Fransisco Press Club’s blog got a little ditty too!
It’s too bad we broke the story four days ago. I’ve thought it before and I’ll say it now: We’re really starting to get on top of this breaking news stuff. Who knew we would cover our administrators?
Update (6:30 p.m.): The East Bay blog is also reporting that Berkeley students had the chance to ask questions about this at a meeting last night, but says that, according to notes taken by John Peabody, there were more questions raised in the answers. He speculates that faculty scrutiny of Lynch may have played in the decision, and many are still wondering about her exact reasons ? even though I think family and stability are fine ones. Hopefully we’ll get to report something again about that.
I’m guessing that this meeting may have been the spark that caused the bigger papers to catch onto it, although someone told me I should have notified Romenesko before he linked to the big boys.
More thoughts about Lynch
I thought I’d get the jump on this because we just broke the story (and of course the Intercom announcement) about Dean Lynch staying in Ithaca. Of course Munzer beat me, but I still have some thoughts about the matter, even if it’s a little Park-centric.
It’s quite a turn from her back-and-forth this summer ? “All but official,” “Not so fast,” from this very blog, “I’m ba-a-a-a-a-ck (and staying),” “Something new to report…” ? about this gig before the official announcement in July. My fellow blogger’s comments about this in March are still true today: “Good call.” Of course that tongue-sticking-out might be a little much.
I have a couple of theories about this, but I’ll get to those a little later. What’s really exciting for me (and I felt was always kind of necessary) is that she’s going to be at the college longer than me. One of the things I always worried about was that she would leave before a full class of students, losing a lot of the the “organizational memory” (to use a term from my major) would be lost with a new dean. Put another way, the new initiatives she’s been establishing ? the Center for Independent Media, the gaming degree that we’ve been hearing about off and on for a couple of years ? would have serious question marks.
My theory is that she realized how much work she still has to do with this school. She’s in the middle of her first semester teaching a course: digital journalism, with the help of Ari Kissiloff, Adam Peruta and Michael Serino. From my end as online editor of The Ithacan, I see these stories and know that our journalism students are only beginning to really consider new media in a thoughtful way. From her experience at ONA, she has a lot to offer students in terms of teaching and helping really bring up our profile. The journalism department is still distraught, and there’s still no official chair, so there’s much to be done.
I am both surprised and excited by this. Lynch has been great for the school, and I think in a lot of ways she’s helped make necessary changes. In the same breath, I think she’s going to get a lot more criticism because if she really is staying, she’s really got to plant her feet. The Center for Independent Media is one place, and this Digital Journalism class, if she continues to teach it, is another. But everybody will be all eyes, no matter what she does.
Dean Lynch to UC Berkeley: Gotcha!
Yup, that’s right: it was announced today that she’ll be turning down the position of dean at the University of California at Berkeley’s graduate school of journalism and continuing in her position as the dean of the Park School of communications.
She hasn’t said anything about it personally (press releases don’t count) but expect something about it on her blog later - she’s good about that.
How long this will last, no one’s really sure, because it seems like she’s a hot commodity on the radar of probably every journalism program in the nation.
Now, I don’t have any idea why she changed her mind (again) but I think her continued leadership of our school can only be considered more of a good thing. She has lots of great plans for the school and it would have been a shame to see them fall to the wayside if she left.
UC Berkeley: I think I speak for most of the Park School when I stick out my tongue in your general direction (west, I believe) and gleefully exclaim, “We won!” Well played, Dean Lynch, well played.
It makes me very happy as a senior who will eventually be an alumni to see her willing to stick with a place we all love, even if it does have its faults. **cough the journalism program fix that first please cough**
UPDATE 10/2: In an e-mail, Dean Lynch explained to me that she’s not “wacko” for changing her mind twice (her words):
“I know I look pretty wacko — I’m not, honestly, really — but I am following my heart, and at the end of the day, that’s always the right thing to do.”
And in case you were wondering how long she’ll be staying?
“I plan on being on this team for a long time to come….it’s a winner! “
Plus, Ithaca is gorges and all that. And I’m sure those tree-loving hippie protest monkeys at Berkeley had something to do with her decision to stay here. I personally wouldn’t want a colony of drum circle-prone weirdos living in the trees outside of my office.
Feed for College Ave.
