Harvard used to be the school you aspired to go to. It produced US presidents, Wall Street investment bankers, prominent lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and Nobel Prize winners. Today it is known for anti-semitism and rejecting outstanding students because they are Asian or do not fit the racial profile to reach the correct “equality and diversity” numbers. The school’s presidents plagiarize, and big donors are withdrawing their pledges.
Harvard has become a joke with a $50 billion endowment. If it were a stock it would have lost half of its value. It is as broken as Boeing.
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Not every university is in such shambles. A small private school in the Bronx, New York, already producing very fine doctors each year, will get a chance at a broader group of applicants. Ruth Gottesman, a 93-year-old former professor at Albert Einstein College, with the help of Warren Buffett, just donated $1 billion to her former school so students there will never have to pay tuition.
Ruth Gottesman’s husband, Sandy, became friendly with Warren Buffett early in both of their careers. He was a Wall Street dealmaker who brought ideas to the Omaha investor. Interestingly, the first one, a department store, ended up as a complete flop financially, but the two men formed a friendship that lasted until Sandy died. Over 60 years, they shared ideas and Cherry Cokes and often talked for hours into the morning.
Gottesman kept pouring money into Berkshire Hathaway stock and his fortune grew and grew.
He and Ruth had already given away many millions in charity, but the big gift came after Sandy died.
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Life is a different picture at small colleges, particularly private schools around the country, which are steadily losing enrollment.
Generally, colleges are struggling for students because tuition keeps rising. Many young people increasingly cannot justify the expense. The reward of a liberal arts education seems vague. Engineering schools find it hard to enroll kids with the background and desire to fill the programs. Recruitment from poorer high schools is a struggle. Women still are tough to find for engineering and technical areas.
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We have almost reached March Madness. The NCAA Basketball Tournament used to be the highlight of my sports calendar, but at least for me, it has faded in importance.
The highlight of my undergraduate experience was covering the University of Michigan basketball team for the Michigan Daily in the Final Four in Portland, Oregon. I got to see John Wooden in action on the UCLA bench and witness Bill Bradley score 56 points for Princeton. I had something to do with that, but that’s another blog.
These days, the best players play in college for only one year or go pro right out of high school. The tournament’s big appeal is as a betting vehicle. The polls indicate UConn, Purdue, Houston, and Arizona will be this year’s top seeds.
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Question: How would you change colleges?
5 Comments
The entire ordeal surrounding Harvard and Gay is by far the most embarrassing and disappointing things I’ve seen happen to higher academia. This is ignoring all of the other outlandish gender/sexual theory being taught (thanks to the horrific experiments of John Money) and the mass psychosis they are teaching children is normal these days.
I’m in my 30’s and between the aforementioned, mass criminal illegal invasion, trampling of the bill of rights since the Bush era, I feel as though I don’t recognize the country I was taught about in history and experienced in the 90s-00s.
I want to pack my things and start my own nation, but there’s nowhere left to go.
Recruit on merit, performance and skills. Drop the DEI and make the professors become skilled teachers not just research grant seekers. Get rid of tenure and make all academia perform daily not just getting to show up with very low accountability.
Seriously, I would talk to Mitch Daniels, and do exactly what he recommended.
My status as Boilermaker grad and Hoosier by birth notwithstanding, that man has cred.
Ben, I wish Mitch Daniels would run for President of the U.S under No Labels Party.
He ran Purdue in exemplary fashion.
Can I agree with all of the above? When you are lying on an operating table the last thing you are thinking about is DEI. Meritocracy is OK for sports, why not every other profession?