I thought a lot (maybe "some" is the better modifier) of philanthropic gifts to Universities require that they be directed towards scholarships and fellowships for low-income students.

Taking the low road, I note that Philander Smith College is one of the awesomest names in higher ed. It's like the adulterous version of Smith College. They should have a mixer.

I think it's "some," but that would vary from gift to gift.

2 takes awesome advantage of the hilarious name. What a mixer that would be.

I went to Harvard's commencement last week, strictly speaking the Annual Alumni Association meeting, to hear Bill Gates and Derek Bok speak. Gates said that the most important goal was reducing inequity. It seemed a bit rich to me.

Also, arthegall--I met someone at my reunion who just graduated from your program.

I would bet a lot more gifts are directed to "I want my name on a shiny new building" and the sports teams than scholarships. If someone could wrestle up a breakdown, I'd be quite curious.

I may agree in practice, but isn't the idea that you're helping to fund our collective acquisition of knowledge and understanding? (Which in the long run helps everyone?) It's like donationing to the local symphony: certainly mostly a benefit to the rich, but at the same time it's supporting the arts, which many people think isn't exactly unimportant. In other words, there are more types of philanthropy than just helping poor people, important as thay may be.

While I bet my university probably genuinely needs the dough after Katrina, I can't bring myself to give them any because it was so plagued with financial mismanagement scandals when I went there. Bet you're sorry you took money out of the endowment for the football team now, idiots.

Wah. Now my idle comment, wondering if alumni of Philander Smith College are proud to call themselves Philanderers, will seem to be ripped off of 2.

The article? Eh. While I don't think Columbia should pat itself on the head that much, because a $400 million grant is probably going other places than the financial aid office, it's still not a bad way to give away one's wealth, though perhaps less praiseworthy than if the $400 million went to improve early education so kids could get into Columbia. (And whining "but they should give it to my school." doesn't really help much, either)

I'm starting a foundation to improve marksmanship among gang members, so that fewer innocent bystanders will be killed.

And I thought needle exchange was controversial.

10 is awesome.

Bet you're sorry you took money out of the endowment for the football team now, idiots

I wish this were likely to be true.

I was just thinking yesterday about how the simplest way for Essex County Jews to get their names immortalized appears to be, donate a couple hundred large to the JCC and have a health and fitness center or similar named after your family.

At my alma mater, and I assume other schools, donated funds are usually earmarked for specific purposes, and usually a pretty big proportion goes to financial aid, the football team, &c.

But one of the weird quirks of alumni is the desire not to have just a building named after themselves, but a dorm. Of course, the university doesn't build dorms all the time, so there's literally millions of dollars hanging around waiting until the campus expands again.

At my school, naming rights are important:

"The Carl Smith Center, Home of David A. Harrison III Field at Scott Stadium"

One day, I hope to have the extra point line at the south end zone named after me.

It's like donationing to the local symphony

Except that symphonies are almost all financially struggling institutions, and their benefit to the rich is generally overstated, so the analogy is weak. Plus, it's an analogy, so Landers is banned.

Ugggh, I'm sorry to hear about Antioch. Both of my parents are Alumni and I have always respected it as an institution that has tried to maintain a certain identity.

They did name a dorm after one of my ancestors. I'll bet that they hit his poor descendants up for money to keep the name.

It's like donating to the symphony in that both are forms of philanthropy aimed at something other than direct aid to the poor and disadvantaged, Jesus. It's not an analogy, it's another example.

My great-great-great-grandfather was named Philander.

I'm actually not kidding about that.

21:

What a great name. I'll bet he left a lot of descendants.

Naming rights: the rich person's tagging.

(Analogy? Fine, ban me.)

23:

Isnt that what the new interest in wine making is all about?

I'm starting a foundation to improve marksmanship among gang members, so that fewer innocent bystanders will be killed.

When I first read that, I assumed that the first clause related to the letters used in gang tattoos.

Give money to your local CCs.

Nothing annoys me more than having my *employer* ask me to *donate part of my paycheck* back to them. Puhleeze.

Mr. B.'s employer, which let us say does not exactly win loads of points with us for its treatment of Iraqi employees/translators in the Green Zone, wants him to donate money. He did one of his "tickled beyond belief" silly giggly dances while saying "donate money to us so that we can lobby the government to promote more fucked-up legislation! Oh yes!"

Maybe it's a rich versus super-rich thing. If you're rich, and can afford to name one thing at your alma mater after yourself, you'll do that. If you're super-rich (at Hopkins, this is Mike Bloomberg and the awesomely-named Zanvyl Krieger), and already have a lot of things named after yourself, then maybe you'll look to actually do some more-direct good with your money.

Nothing annoys me more than having my *employer* ask me to *donate part of my paycheck* back to them.

Seriously. Good grief.

He did one of his "tickled beyond belief" silly giggly dances

When Mr B and I elope, no one but B will be surprised.

I say this more in sadness than in anger, but Jesus is banned!

Also: Philander Smith aside, no one's really gotten around to the cheap joke.

That is too bad about Antioch. I taught at one of their branch campuses in grad school: great mission.

Wow, virtually every comment on that article says "Excuse me Mr. author, this article is the height of sour grapes. THIS MONEY WILL GO TO LET UNDERPRIVILEGED PEOPLE INTO COLUMBIA. HOW IS THAT PERPETUATING PRIVILEGE???"

Guys, the number of poor people who get into Ivy League schools is a really, really small number of people. $400 million?!?

29: Not at all. I actually thought, one of these days I should really videotape this; I bet the unfoggedians would love it.

For comparison, 83 percent of my students received the Pell Grant during that same year, and 84 percent applied for financial aid.

Someone's angling for $400 million of their own!

And, much as I sympathize with his point, I really do think that the Columbia donation is the right move for helping poor students in a return-on-dollars sense if you want to give to a college. Although the money would almost certainly be best spent on early education, by the time you get to college there are huge accelerating returns to bigger-name schools and high-compensation degrees. A given dollar amount paid in tuition at Columbia probably returns 1.5-3 times in future salary what a dollar in tuition paid at Philander Smith returns, even including their 3 times lower tuition.

If you want to create future philanthropists from poor and working-class backgrounds who will work to even greater benefit of the poor, Columbia is the much better bet.

A friend of mine during college had the same last name as a bridge or something on campus, but she wasn't related except maybe very distantly to the family that had contributed to have that made, so she got annoyed by constantly being asked if that was how she got there.

5: I dunno about Bill Gates. How many millions of dollars has the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation given out to poor people, or educational efforts or public health concerns or whatever? Call him annoying or hackish or whatever, but I'm pretty sure he's done more about inequality and helping the poor than most filthy rich people.

Philandropy is wasted on those with large endowments.

I idly daydream of the future time when young scholars will bicycle through the mist, 'neath the dreaming spires of Oxford Daniel Davies Says Balls To The Lot Of You University.

No time to look it up to verify, but isn't Philander Smith also looking at having its art collection (donated by Georgia O'Keefe) ransacked by Alice Walton?

Considering that Northwestern's stadium was named "Dyche" (pronounced the fun way) for many years, I say, don't give up on your dreams, dd.

I don't think they were offered in opposition, but I have to go with 35b over 34b. Elite education is not, I think, a very effective way to address inequality. Elite universities produce elites, some of whose members may have liberal, philanthropic or even faintly redistributionist sympathies. But the invitation of a handful of people up the class ladder doesn't make it suck less to be poor for anyone other than those invited. I don't think 34b is such a good bet. Giving to Harvard aside (did they?) the Gates Foundation has gotten a lot of bang for buck on fighting malaria, I think. If you want to do stuff closer to home, I'm with B on the community college thing.

Not to say I didn't enjoy my elite university education. But it wasn't about fighting inequality.

Or! Maybe you could give $200 million to Columbia and $200 million to, say, 200 different CCs! A million would go a long fucking way at a CC.

(pronounced the fun way)

Like "douche", you mean?

37:

I really hope that Dsquared ends up with billions and fulfills his dream.

Guys, the number of poor people who get into Ivy League schools is a really, really small number of people.

That's the thing. The really poor kids who are getting into Columbia are getting all the financial aid they need. Why? Because their estimated federal need is very high. The kids who got into Columbia and couldn't afford to go are more likely than not, kids whose parents on paper are doing middle-classishly well, but for whatever reason (previous medical expenses, previous unemployment, whatever) are less well off than the FAFSA calculation indicates.

To be honest, I'm not sure how the $400 million grant is supposed to help poor kids at all. Columbia already meets everyone's stated financial need. They admit, so they say, need-blind. So it's not as though they would have offered admission to 500 more worthy poor kids but for the lack of funds. And I doubt that Columbia is going to start handing out *more* than the FAFSA-calculated amount in finanical aid. And even if they do, it's going to help the middle class far more than it is the poor.

So, whence the philanthropy? The author's probably right that his school, which *can't* meet everyone's stated financial need, could help more people than Columbia.

"Dyche" (pronounced the fun way)

I can think of at least three fun ways this could be pronounced, in English alone.

38: I believe you are thinking of the Stieglitz Collection at Fisk University. I don't recall hearing specifically that Walton was one of the prospective buyers, but it wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

43:37: If anyone's going to be paypalling anything, I'm much more bullish on this one than on sending Armsmasher to play dodgeball with D.C. bloggers.

40: Gates went to Harvard and dropped out. Agreed to your general point; the argument for strengthening philanthropy by giving to wealthy institutions is a species of trickle-down economics, which in my lifetime has only widened the gap between rich and poor.

Someone's angling for $400 million of their own!

Superb Simpson's reference.

On the merits, I do tend to agree that universities are largely undeserving of philanthropy. As someone put it "it's hard to call it charity when you are giving to a school with an endowment larger than the combined GDP of the 100 poorest nations"

I agree that donating to a rich university seems like an awfully diluted way to help the world.

I recognize the University system's importance, but you are not exactly throwing a University a life vest whereas you are with some charities.

I support my school by buying those outrageously overpriced tickets for a stinking team that cannot ever seem to beat Tech. I don't think more is required.

44: But couldn't donations be used to meet the FAFSA-calculated need through grants instead of loans?

In other news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/nyregion/13hospital.html

"A group of philanthropists led by Joan and Sanford I. Weill plans to announce today that it has pledged $400 million to build research centers and to recruit senior scientists for Weill Medical College of Cornell University."

By the way, this charity finder site is great.

38: You might also be thinking about Randolph College, neé Randolph-Macon Woman's College.

47: Dude, Wrongshore, I've got a good thing going here. Oxford's never going to put "Balls" on their halls. "Bollocks", maybe.

53:

all the links are on the Terrorist watch, arent they?

52: You've gotta respect people for donating another $400,000,000 to a place that's already named after them.

Alas, although Harvard boasts a Leverett house after president John Leverett, a Kirkland House after John Thornton Kirkland, and a Quincy House after Josiah Quincy, somehow poor Leonard Hoar never made the list.

the argument for strengthening philanthropy by giving to wealthy institutions is a species of trickle-down economics, which in my lifetime has only widened the gap between rich and poor.

BUT THE PIE IS BIGGER!

UVa has a Cocke Hall.

40 - I wasn't meaning to claim that donating to Columbia would efficiently combat inequality. I was saying that it would harness the severity of inequality in favor of helping some poor people. The rough power-law distribution of incomes means that people who earn Columbia degrees get income boosts many many times larger than those graduating from bottom-tier schools, and have a decent shot at the ludicrous wealth out there.

Picking a small number of people to put through Columbia instead of a large number of people to put through a low-end college will exacerbate inequality without a doubt, but it will probably put more total money into the hands of formerly poor people and create more formerly poor people in the position to be philanthropic in the future. But Cala's point that Columbia almost certainly already had enough money to fund all their potential poorer students is a great one.

If you really want to address inequality, higher education is a piss-poor place to do it. I'd probably build a shitload of fantastic and well-funded magnet elementary and high schools in poor areas of big cities to get a large number of poor but smart kids in low-income areas up to snuff for the already-existing needs-blind admissions at colleges with huge endowments.

"I'd probably build a shitload of fantastic and well-funded magnet elementary and high schools in poor areas of big cities to get a large number of poor but smart kids in low-income areas up to snuff for the already-existing needs-blind admissions at colleges with huge endowments."

Amen JAC. Amen. Fund elementary and middle schools better.

51: Maybe. When you get the FAFSA thing, and the school's financial aid letter comes, the first thing they do is subtract the minimum subsidized loans that you have. That's not going to go away, and that's really not the killer part of the debt. The next thing they do is offer you a combination of loans and/or grants to make up the rest of your need, which may or may not equal the total cost of tuition. Somewhere like Columbia, it's probably mostly grants other than the initial Stafford loan. It's just that the FAFSA calculated need doesn't actually approach the total tuition bill.

21: You don't have to tell us things that we could have guessed, JM.

Any Calistas in the ancestry? Once a very common name. Alpheus? Nathaniel?

BUT THE PIE IS BIGGER!

I can has pie?

The weird bit was that everyone cheered when he said that the only really noble goal was reducing inequality, and I just don't buy this. I'll have to reread all teh speeches to remember what I found bothersome.

I did find Bok's claim that Harvard was the best university in the world with the greatest collection of brilliant minds anywhere a bit over the top.

universities are largely undeserving of philanthropy. As someone put it "it's hard to call it charity when you are giving to a school with an endowment larger than the combined GDP of the 100 poorest nations"

Let us keep in mind that most universities do *not* have endowments like Columbia's, and that comparing what it costs to run a first-class research university with the GDP of (say) Zimbabwe is ludicrous. Gosh, there are people in the world who live on ten cents a day; therefore pure research is a waste of money.

UVa has a Cocke Hall.

Note the consistent use of the phrase "Seng-Liang Wang Hall" instead of "Wang Hall".

You know what's awesome about the IHE piece linked in the post?

The author uses "Oh please!" to launch his argument.

UVa has a Cocke Hall.

UVM has a Buckham Hall, the signs for which are regularly modified to read Fuckham all.

Even when baa goes soft-left, b finds a way to disagree with him. You have to admire the dedication.

57: But there's a Pforzheimer House! Someone at my reunion was commenting that the Loeb gift was much bigger and only got him his name on the office of the governing boards. "North House" was much easier to pronounce, and Loeb would have been an improvement--but Pforzheimer is tough to spit out. (I realize that I'm being totally WASPy and probably racist, but I think that I agree.)

"Dyche" (pronounced the fun way)

Worst part of that story is that the stadium has now been "overnamed." It's now called "Ryan Field" after a later donor. The Dyche family were not pleased, but apparently had no legal recourse.

I think that everyone here has the ability to choose well-targeted charity giving superior to the generic charity giving. Generic giving gets diluted in the already existing sedimented charity/politics/culture, whereas startups have a chance of changing something. (Like risk capital, because some startups fail or turn out to be frauds.)

But no one here has much money.

But no one here has much money.

Emerson's not-so-subtle way of trying to bait someone into supporting him in his dotage.

62: I don't question that most colleges do give you the standard Stafford package first (which is what, $18K?), but I don't think that they are required to do so.

The FAFSA estimated contributions are absurd, but a sufficiently generous college grant package + part-time work and summer jobs can equal debt-free education.

70: I'm suspicious of baa's motives in giving huge chunks of cash to the poorest, most war-torn nations.

baa is an arms dealer and profiteer!!!

22: Going by the etymology, wouldn't Philander have been more into the man-on-man action?

I didn't say that.

I hate reading comments at IHE, and always regret commenting myself. It's like they all have absolutely zero reading comprehension skills, but all the sassy flair of Dr. Johnson at the club, with their "Why Sir, it appears one must take a good look at the name of this man's college and remember never to donate, lest our own funds fall into the hands of this contemptible snob who doesn't believe in sending poor people to Columbia!"

I have worked in donor relations for a few years and discovered that the thing all development people know is that no one, not one person on earth, gives large sums of money for philanthropic reasons. You give a dime to a guy on the corner for philanthropic reasons; you give a million dollars because (a) you want your halfwit nephew to get accepted by them, (b) you want your name on something when you're dead, or (c) you're hoping they give you an honorary degree and invite you to parties.

I think it's about $18K over four years. I don't know if they're required to, but I don't see why that wouldn't continue; I don't think anyone's not going to Columbia because the $2500 per year was too much.

It *can* equal debt-free education, but it usually doesn't. I ended up with a "full" scholarship, meaning that my parents were mostly broke, I took out the Stafford loans, and the rest was made up with grants, work-study and all of those together equalled tuition. That's, practically speaking, about as good as it gets. But if our 'need' had been less, I still would have taken out the Stafford loans, still received the grant money, still work-studied but it *wouldn't* have equalled tuition.

I can't see Columbia ignoring the FAFSA calculation in favor of their own calculation that means that a) they're *not* meeting 100% of need and b) they need to give out more money.

80: you give a million dollars because s/b you give a million dollars to your alma mater because

My wife is a development officer at an Ivy League school, so I'm trying to get her opinion on this. My personal take on it is that, yes, donating $50M for a student center isn't the noblest form of philanthropy, but endowing a scholarship, or a research lab, or something along those lines can make a huge difference. Or, in other words, I'm with B in 66.

(Also, my mother-in-law went to Randolph-Macon Women's College -- I shall have to forward her 'Smasher's post.)

Some people max out low-interest college loans and use them to start small businesses. They are the smart ones.

When my son went to Tufts (which believes that it is near-Ivy) it cost him no more than to go to the Portland State school. Financial aid can be excellent. Equality-wise, though, donors would be better off beefing up the state schools where poor people actually go, and beefing up K-12 education in poor areas. And doing all kinds of things to help out poor parents so they can give their kids a better life.

35: A buddy of mine in college had the same last name as the previous president, who was still around in some emeritus role and had various things named after him. Some staff that were just savvy enough to be dangerous were very nice to him. He milked it for all he could.

As far as discursive charity goes, I make a lump sum donation to the Grice United Fund every year, rather than suffer the annoyance of having to show piecemeal charity to a large number of annoying motherfuckers one at a time.

Wait, wait. that's not true. I don't even know what the Grice United Fund is, and I generally eschew profanity. I seem to be channeling something implanted into my subconscious here.

Equality-wise, though, donors would be better off beefing up the state schools where poor people actually go, and beefing up K-12 education in poor areas. And doing all kinds of things to help out poor parents so they can give their kids a better life.

True of course, but just for the sake of completely reversing my position here, in response to 83, I remember hearing (dunno if it's true) that actually targeted giving is a big pain in most university's asses: people want to support what *they* think is valuable, when the university's real needs may lie elsewhere, in something totally unsexy like building maintenance or some such.

The observation has been made that a college education is one of the few services where providers try to convince customers that it's costlier than it actually is. I think the theory is that if you tell people what it will actually cost them to go to (say) Princeton, they will regard the school as less prestigious.

87 is more or less right, I think. The most valuable giving is un-targeted. I think if universities have a specific need, generally they'll ask for it.

My point in 83 was just that certain types of giving to even a well-endowed institution can (directly or indirectly) help the less-fortunate.

Wasn't that also a problem the Red Cross had after 9/11? If I understand how the model used to work, basically, after media-friendly disasters, the aid pours in, and the Red Cross uses some of that for the current disaster, and the leftovers for all the other help that doesn't get the attention and the dollars.

But people insisted they only wanted their money to help NYC after 9/11, so now the money that's there can't be used for anything else.

Aren't the less fortunate disfavored by God? What's the point of funding schools if everything I ever learned is wrong?

In terms of decreasing income inequality, donating to universities is irrelevant. People going to universities have already made it. Donating to primary schools and CC's (as others note), free health clinics, child care, affordable housing authorities, public transit lobbying, all those things that help broke unemployed low-skill single parents find jobs are more important.

87 - B contains multitudes.

89.2: I know, I was just saying because I can.

88: What it will cost *them*, or what it will cost?

People going to universities have already made it.

I've had students at public universities--and Antioch University, for that matter--that would prove you wrong.

You know what's really annoying? My alma mater, a state school located where I live, built a huge, useless sculptural wall with alumni names on it for like, a million dollars, with money they had wheedled out of the alumni for that purpose. It's ugly, it doesn't do anything, and that million dollars -- assuming it was there to be wheedled in one form or another -- could have gone to any number of more useful projects.

If I was a billionaire, I would donate money to public education and earmark it for staff salaries. Chew on that, faculty and administrators!

I think I'd donate to a public university over a community college, in terms of returns-on-dollars-donated.

I really struggled financially both as an undergraduate and a graduate student. However, saying that, 92 is still largely right.

97: I tend to agree, although f.a. for c.c. students would be amazingly helpful.

98, 92: Actually I'd go with helping broke unemployed low-skill single parents get some education so they can find *better* jobs.

94: I mean, what it will cost the customer - the student.

I know that my alma mater makes a big push to have named chairs and scholarships as oppossed to buildings, with the underlying threat that a building will eventually be torn down when it has outlived its usefullness, a professorship lives as long as the institution. The wags have always wondered what the "Bite me" professor of Economics would cost.
Naming rights on scholarships were relatively cheap, and you get to have all sorts of fun requirements, but the development office discourages fun.

Maybe, but I'd worry that the financial aid wouldn't help the students go anywhere. Community colleges aren't, ime, degree-granting. At best, the student has a few credit that may or may not transfer to the local branch of the public university.

CCs often provide job credentials that can immediately pull you into the lower-middle class. Where need is a major factor, this makes more sense than a terminal BA or BS degree which is often useless.

96b: Yes, and then you'd watch as the district voters rejected the budget twice for fear that when the money you gave runs out, they'll have to foot the bill for those teachers. And just wait until someone hears a rumor that you support teaching "Darwinism"...

I agree that supporting public elementary and secondary school is the way to go, but I think either non-directed giving or giving directed at simple stuff like computers would be more productive than something as controversial and complicated as salaries. I mean, as long as we're arguing hypotheticals, we might as well do it right.

I'm the Ivy League development officer married to MRH, and he forwarded me this thread. I've probably missed the last zillion comments just in the time it took me to write this, so forgive its randomness. I think it's true that some higher ed philanthropy is motivated by less-than-noble impulses. I think it's true that we desperately need to improve the "pipeline" of pre-schools, elementary schools, and high schools so that there is a larger and more diverse pool of students prepared for rigorous college educations.

On the other hand, I think that giving money to a "rich" university is not a waste of philanthropy. Universities produce a huge amount of this country's scientific research; they bring top scholars together and give them resources to work on society's intractable problems; and yes, they educate students, both first-generation college students and extremely privileged students who, we hope, will benefit from an education that brings them into close contact with less-privileged peers, emphasizes diverse perspectives, and challenges their comfort zones. If they're going to be leaders anyway, I think it's worthwhile to try to mold them into thoughtful and responsible leaders.

I find that discussions about what is the most "worthy" philanthropic priority to be problematic, because should you always be giving your money ONLY to the most desperately needy cause? How do you determine what that is? Should we avoid giving to our local food banks because there is another country somewhere were people have even LESS to eat? Is it selfish to give to our local food banks because a reduction in poverty in our own communities improves our own quality of life? (Is it annoying and pompous to phrase everything as a question? Is it too late for me to turn back?)

Anyway, I'm not actually a part of this site, so I don't know why I dragged my soapbox into the middle of you all (blame MRH), I thought maybe I'd give my unsolicited perspective as someone who spends a lot of time convincing rich people that their money can do good if gifted to their Ivy League alma mater.

104 is right.

My mother and my sister were, at one time, both broke single mums on state benefits. It wasn't university degrees but vocational qualifications that helped.

all this aid for the "poor but smart". In my experience, "the smart" tend to be able to look after themselves. the poor and stupid need your money more.

"a terminal BA or BS degree"

Mine wasn't terminal, but in the seven years it took me to get it, I really did think it was going to kill me at times.

Aw geez, I just reread my own comment and I came off as insufferable, just as I expected I would. MRH will pay tonight.

Unfogged: causing marital strife since 200x!

107: I don't tend to think of community colleges as granting vocational degrees, but I could be wrong here. They struck me more as "college-ultra-lite" than "we'll teach you how to be a plumber/electrician/someone who will make a decent wage off a specific skill". There are a large number of small private vocational schools with very reasonable tuition that I would more closely associate with the old British polytechnics.

the poor and stupid need your money more.
So be sure to give your spare change to the panhandler standing at the freeway onramp.

106: I bet you're very good at your job. Where should I send the check?

I must say, critiquing other peoples' philanthropy seems a bit bootless to me. The fact that people donate in ways designed to make them feel good seems like a pretty benign vice, and infinitely preferable to the alternative of not engaging in philanthropy at all.

Also, dsquared, good luck on your dream. Even Jesus Christ and God only got a handful of colleges named after themselves, and they're fuckin' loaded.

re: 112

Yeah, I was thinking more in terms of old polytechnic style education.

I don't tend to think of community colleges as granting vocational degrees, but I could be wrong here.

There's quite a lot of "certificates" that certify that you are able to do some job, usually low on the totem pole at a hospital, or computer/paperwork-related. I'm not sure what these "early childhood education" ones are, perhaps they certify that you can charge more for your day care center.

CCs turn out nurses, tech support people, travel agents, lab techs, teacher's aides, paralegals, realtors, property appraisors, tax preparers, accountants, and so on. The kinds of professions that help people know they'll always be able to find a job and be stable enough to maybe send their own kids to a four-year college.

That plus, for the children of those families, getting as many prereqs out of the way at a cc before transferring to a 4-year institution makes college affordable.

117: ECE certificates at least show that you know something about child development; they're helpful in getting a daycare job, especially at the better daycares with lower turnover (and therefore presumably better pay/benefits), which often advertise that their employees are ECE certified.

re: 108

Dsquared's line that the 'smart can look after themselves' is reminiscent (deliberately?) of a great Michael Foot quote:

'We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer, To hell with them. The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.'

Look, people, when you sell arms to the poor everyone benefits. It's ec 101.

MRH is married to Stallman? WEIRD.

Some people max out low-interest college loans and use them to start small businesses. They are the smart ones.

They're also breaking the law.

I thought maybe I'd give my unsolicited perspective...

I thougth mrh solicited your perspective?

They're also breaking the law.

They can call it "independent study".

121: Or at least Che 101. No one can get to the left of baa!

And of course, intellectual excellence is good in-and-of-itself and should be funded. Whether the best way of doing this is donation to a University's general fund I don't know, and in fact tend to doubt.

the poor and stupid need your money more.

Sorry, dsquared. We're still not investing in your hedge fund.

Letting alumni name the new pool after themselves lets the money come out of the pot allocated for bidding up the price of land in Manhattan, buying a new Ferrari, or coke and hookers. As opposed to the much smaller "make the world a better place" pot. I think this is a good thing.

128:

Couldnt you have picked something more worthwhile than the Indians???!?!

re: 128

Hey, that pot makes the world a better place for Ferrari dealers, the syndicates in Medellin, and hookers.

121: May I just say that over time I have come to be fonder and fonder of Baa, who knows better than to get all wound up when I point out his moral bankruptcy?

Btw, Baa, how'd you like the Second Sex? Serious question.

that pot makes the world a better place for . . . hookers.

Arguably not.

About two thirds of community college students are in "vocational" degrees. Although the vocational/non-vocational distinction is sort of, well, classist...everybody earns a living.

Some of them will make more $$ than the Phds who post here, and maybe be more socially useful. Being a skilled nurse is a great career. Doesn't leave as much time to post blog comments as your more intellectual-type work does, though.

From a utilitarian point of view it's more efficacious to give money to the rich and stupid, because we all suffer from loss aversion and these people are the most likely to lose their resources, resulting in unhappiness.

The poor and stupid have no resources, therefore nothing to lose from you ignoring them - and if they are donated to, they are likely to waste the money.

Meanwhile the poor and smart may make good use of the donation, but as I said earlier, the phenomenon of loss aversion means that there will be less happiness created by enabling people to gain things than by preventing people from losing things.

The rich and smart, of course, would experience no marginal benefit from donations.

It's called triage.

Wow, I think my 134 actually makes sense.

A friend of mine got a 2-year CC credential in IT or the like after getting a philosophy BA in a top-250 school. He was working in the field before he finished his first year of CC.

The liberal arts track is either the front end of a 5-to-10-year track, or else a personal indulgence or a prestige degree. Almost all actual jobs require an MA/MS. That's part of the futility of education-for-equality: the more people attain a given level, the higher the requirements become, since the job structure of the economy doesn't magically produce well-paying jobs for everyone with a degree.

Right now, at age 57, my sister is at serious risk of being squeezed out of the career she's been in for 15 years, because the credentialing requirements changed. Her last three bosses think she's one of the best workers they've had, but credentialization does not take quality of work into account, just training.

134 assumes that donating to the poor and stupid means giving money directly to people who may waste it, while the rich "may make good use of" it. Both statements would be just as true if they were reversed.

From a utilitarian point of view it's more efficacious to give money to the rich and stupid

Thus, donate to the elite Univ. of your choice that has a legacy admit bias! Next problem.

re 131: I bogged down, to tell you the truth -- didn't get much over 100 or so pages. If I were to give a quick score card of what I've read I'd say:

1. Right (and basically incontrovertibly right) about the history of sexism in western philosophy/thought.

2. Wrong about focusing her discussion on "the data of biology" on sex difference to what I'd dub engineering differences. DB tends to boil biology down to (or at least strongly emphasize) physical strength and reproductive differences, and I think this is a mistake.

3. Maybe right about gender in Freud and Marx, but I have no idea as won't claim to understand what either thinker has to say here in any depth.

4. Unconvincing, or at least incomplete, in teasing out an "immanence/transcendence" difference between men and women. I simply don't believe -- as I think DB does -- that men in primitive societies risking their lives in hunting and in war thereby acquire a relationship to transcendence (putting some goal higher than life) than women do. This seemed like Hegelianism gone wrong to me. Insofar as this felt like a theme that DB was going to lean on, it seemed like a false step. It's a totally proto-Hirschman moment, however.

134: Paris Hilton charity drive!

Right now, at age 57, my sister is at serious risk of being squeezed out of the career she's been in for 15 years, because the credentialing requirements changed. Her last three bosses think she's one of the best workers they've had, but credentialization does not take quality of work into account, just training.

A friend's mom has the same thing happening - the state decided to require all people in her field to have a certain certification that required something like six months of full-time class to teach her what she already knew at a cost of $10k or so, which is a lot in that part of the country. Sucks.

137: Ah, but the rich and stupid can hire an adviser to tell them how not to waste the money, which is not an option available to the poor and stupid, or even the poor and smart. On the other hand logically the adviser should be able to bilk them out of the money.

I knew a lot of kids in California who took entry-level sciecne courses at community colleges and then transferred to UC schools to get degrees in things like engineering. Intro Chem probably doesn't need to be taught by a Nobel Laureate.

RMS--Would you mind e-mailing me? I have some questions about development stuff. mrh can vouch for me.

I wonder who coined the use of "development" to describe institutional fundraising, donor relations, etc.

The liberal arts track is either the front end of a 5-to-10-year track, or else a personal indulgence or a prestige degree. Almost all actual jobs require an MA/MS.

This strikes me as wrong, John. Almost all actual (for certain values of "actual") jobs require a BA or BS now, because they're signalling devices, but I think it's still a very select strata of jobs that require a masters degree. I'm handwaving, but I can look at numbers if needed. (For one thing, Mass. has the highest percentage of its working-age population with graduate degrees at 14%.)

at a cost of $10k or so, which is a lot in that part of the country

As opposed to which part of the country, exactly, where $10k is not a lot of money??

What is an "actual job"? I recognize that master's degrees are becoming more and more common and more jobs require them (which I consider bullshit, and I agree with your point about the problem with education-for-equality), but "actual" is going a bit far, don't you think?

146: Well, there are lots of parts of the country for which $10k is not a) your mortage payment for two years, or b) four month's salary at a good job.

Mostly pwned by Snark, I see.

Department of Paralyzing Despair: Even if you give money where it will help the poorest of the poor achieve professional or high-paying technical/blue-collar employment, you're still not doing much to change the overall contours of the economy. Stability in either of those two categories is increasingly anachronistic.

(Locally, the picture is a little different. Many local hospitals no longer hire nurses from the region because the competition is so fierce; local utilities fire more than a third of their new employees because they don't have the basic skills they need. L.A. has a bigger gap in skills than it does in jobs right now, and improved education at all levels, including vocational, would help.)

My giving is lower than it should be, and I tend to give in somewhat arbitrary fashion to Lambda, Planned Parenthood, and a few local economic-justice and immigrant-rights organizations--politics over services. I also give to the smaller of my two alma maters--not the one with the endowment in the low ten figures.

134: There was a Reagan-era Doonesbury in which some fatcat (Mr. Slackmeyer, maybe?) was testifying before Congress about the importance of tax cuts for the well-to-do, and the socially constructive uses to which the wealthy put their riches.

"And the poor?" a congressperson asked.
"Studies show they tend to blow it at the track."

I don't have any gripe with Trudeau, and I still enjoy Doonesbury, but it's a shame that he seems to have mostly lost interest in the goofballs who run this country.

It seems like anything that pushes people up the education ladder, at any place, increases the wages for the class they left behind, and bids down the wages for the class they're entering.

I don't have time to read all the comments, so I apologize if I repeat something, but my understanding is that Antioch would have been a pretty good target of donations, as educational donations go. Most of my knowledge of it comes from this tribute to Coretta Scott King by my friend Joel, whose mother was the college's first female president. Based on the tiny sample of Antiochians I've encountered, I'd say it's done some good work.

In general, my alumni generosity is directly proportional to my conviction that the institution is committed to financial aid and sharing its wealth and resources with students for whom it's a real boon. Having experienced a little of that magic--suddenly having wonderful opportunities opened up to you despite your lack of financial resources--I have no problem working to keep it going in the world. There are better and worse ways of doing it, though. Donors who make a lot of cosmetic demands with their money are a pox. I personally would rather have a slightly ramshackle concert hall without any trim or fancy crystal and know that the endowment was that much better prepared to bring lots of kids in for concerts. Sadly, aesthetic snobs usually win over operations geeks.

"Almost all actual jobs require an MA/MS."

I wouldn't have expected such an odd, almost bizarre, statement from Emerson. I always saw him as in touch with the people. The people without masters degrees, that is.

Baa:

2: Why do you think it's a mistake for her to specify sex difference as limited to physical differences that we can identify? I'm assuming that you think she should extend it to psychological or behavior differences (if I'm wrong, tell me), but those, of course, are still far from certain. Especially if you start talking about specifics.

4: I'm a little unclear on this bit too. But I *think* what she's saying is less a statement of her own belief than a statement of how we've interpreted/attributed differences to men and women over the years. E.g., soldiers who give their lives for their countries are heroic on a grand scale, while mothers who give their lives for their children are heroic only on a small, personal one. At least, if DeBeauvoir does believe this, I'm not terribly troubled by it: either it's simply an expression of her being a creature of her time or it's an ongoing and debatable issue within the disipline itself. I certainly think she's right about how it plays out, though.

I'm glad you read at least the first 100 pages. I'd smiley you, but that would just get me banned.

I knew a lot of kids in California who took entry-level sciecne courses at community colleges and then transferred to UC schools to get degrees in things like engineering. Intro Chem probably doesn't need to be taught by a Nobel Laureate.

The high level guys just phone it in when teaching those classes, which is why they suck.(no, not always, but way too frequently) My dad, who's taught biology and such at both community colleges and universities told me once that often those lower level science classes were better at the community colleges because the professors there had more of an interest in teaching. It was certainly true here. I ended up taking several general and organic chems as well as my basic genetics that way. Also was about a 1/3 of the cost. Taking your lower level science classes at a 4 year is for suckers.

California community colleges are great. I would recommend CC + transfer to anyone as a superior way to get your general education requirements out of the way. Small classes, instructors who actually get paid reasonably well, and teaching is their whole job. The other side of the dearth of tenure track positions is you get a whole lot of smart young academics who can't find jobs, and thus bring their not-inconsiderable talents to bear educating anybody who can pony up $15 a unit.

Of course, this means they also spend a lot of time dealing with idiots, but that just means smart students get treated as a breath of fresh air.

156: At universities with Nobel prize winners, TAs teach the lower level classes, for any meaningful use of the word "teaching."

157: Absolutely. And with luck, some smart young academics who've decided they actually prefer that kind of teaching. Ahem.

158.2: hah, yeah, right!

Er, that is, of course. It also pays better to be a CC instructor than it does to be an associate professor, I believe. At least in some cases.

A few years back there was something in the NYT about how the CC+transfer route had become so popular that CCs were creating honors tracks for the future BAs, leading to worries about falling away from their original core mission, shortchanging the rank-and-file students, and so on.

Hypothesis: low-level courses at CCs are a better bet in the hard sciences, engineering, etc. than in the humanities. Discuss.

158: In science that is not entirely true, and is kind of luck of the draw/a matter of seeking out good professors. In mathematics I had four fairly famous professors, 2 of whom rocked, 1 of whom was okay, and 1 of whom sucked, but all four of them did all the lecturing and were very available in office hours. My first chemistry professor was indeed a show-business lecturer who was impossible to talk to, and his TAs did all the heavy lifting, but the next three were all very available, and their star power in the lecture hall was well worth the price of admission--and the discussions they brought from their research were also helpful and inspiring. Carolyn Bertozzi comes to mind as the kind of lecturer who just electrifies your brain, and held amazing office hours. Bio 1a at Berkeley is kind of obnoxious, b/c three professors divy it up and it's impossible to find them ever. But they are usually fabulous lecturers. And in physics---well, I switched to the physics major b/c the people were so much nicer and paid me so much attention that I decided even if I didn't do physics, I would still learn a lot. I once calculated that I got more one-on-one professorial attention in physics per class than I did in high school.

BUT the real point is that the TAs are awesome, and I would not trade my TAs for anything in the world. Some of them are still my best friends. 90% of them were fabulous, fabulous teachers. I can only off hand think of one, maybe two actually bad TAs. Everyone complains that Berkeley is a graduate school, but that's precisely why it's such a wonderful undergraduate school.

161: I don't see why basic comp couldn't be done as well at CCs as at 4-year institutions.

That said, the comp course I team-taught at a CC in grad school was just excruciating. The tenured woman who was in charge was of the irritating touchy-feely variety and had zero conception of anything that had ever been done in the comp/rhet field.

BUT the real point is that the TAs are awesome, and I would not trade my TAs for anything in the world.

Oh yeah [cue 70s soundtrack].

I also want to note that while I took far fewer humanities classes than you people, I LOVED my humanities professors, and they were so incredibly teacherly to me. I'm tempted to call them out by name. I had the chair of the classics department twice freshman year, and he was simply a wonderful wonderful man-- in retrospect I'm amazed at how patiently he'd sit through past office hours and answer dozens of probably stupid questions about archeology and linguistics. My religious studies professor had this beautiful knack of taking a big lecture hall and somehow making a seminar discussion out of it. And my german lit professor---oh, Kenneth Weisinger, rest in peace, you were such a wonderful teacher.

Seriously, maybe I just had good luck, but generally speaking my professors were great and attentive and available, and it galls me slightly that their labors get dismissed just b/c they were scholars at a big school.

Oh, sorry, didn't mean to dismiss "real" professors who teach undergrad courses *at all*. Just that ime, the prolific researchers don't usually teach the undergrad classes--and the TAs that do, do a marvellous job.

Actually, at my undergraduate institution, I don't remember more than two or three lecturers who I'd say were genuinely poor. Most were pretty solid teachers, with a couple of genuinely inspiring ones.

A couple of them could be pretty savage, though. I got the sense that there were a few who were great with you if you were bright, and you were on top of shit, but if you were struggling, then they didn't really know how to deal with you.

161: ah, no doubt. I mostly took math and science classes. The English 1 class I had to take was horrific, mostly because the vast majority of students at my school either weren't native speakers, or had never taken an English class in their life. English 2 was a little better, but I still was better read (and a better writer) than the instructor. I also took a philosophy class that was, again, an absolute joke.

On the other hand, the composition class I took here was almost as retarded, and it was allegedly the upper division version. What I get for going to a science-oriented school, I suppose.

One thing that happens at my U that really frustrates me is that many discussion sections are led by undergrads who did well in the class the previous year, and who generally know jack-all about the material outside of the specific narrow set of facts they gleaned from their experience in the class. Not so edifying. At least a TA is plausibly involved in the field.

158.1: That was not at all my experience at Duke. I didn't have any TA's in my major/minor fields. I understand they were used in some big departments.

167 - When I graduated, one prof came up to me and said that I was one of the most interesting students he'd ever taught because I just never understood what was going on. I was never quite sure how to take that. I did agree that I never understood what was going on.

TA's are great...if they're reasonably fluent in English.

168.3 sounds dreadful. I was a rocktastic seminar-participatator in undergrad, but I wouldn't have wanted me leading discussion sections.

Are they paid, at least?

You totally leave whoopee cushions on the undergrad discussion-leader's chair, don't you, Sifu?

166: Yeah, that wasn't aimed at you in particular, just that people always assume I had sucky big lecture classes.

Don't get me wrong, Berkeley is rough. Really rough. I was lucky in that I had a lot of institutional background and advice (my sister was a graduate student), and was bizarrely fearless about talking to professors, and it still kicked my ass. In the short run the tarnished transcript might have been a bit of a problem, but I think in the long run it was good for me.

re: 171

I still can't comprehend an institution in which it'd be acceptable to have people who weren't. But I suppose it's different in science/maths oriented institutions?

I also took a philosophy class that was, again, an absolute joke.

The intro philosophy class I took at CC was pretty terrible. The professor was a nice enough guy, but he spent most of the semester telling stories of his time back in Catholic seminary, most of which had to do with other seminarians hitting on him. We also didn't read any actual philosophy--the textbook was a self-published version of the professor's own lecture notes. It was the Cliff's Notes approach to western philosophy.

On the other hand, all of the poli-sci classes I took were excellent.

I suspect that the rumors of the non-English speaking TA are greatly exaggerated.

In my experience at a large state school, the professors that taught the intro science classes were very organized and enthusiastic, were not the most prestigious scholars at the school, and did a much better job (except for the economics professor) than the TA's. This was because almost every TA I had, in biology, chemistry, physics or economics, had moved to the US from China two to four years beforehand to go to graduate school and was clearly not comfortable with English. With English-speaking TAs it was completely different, they made the classes much easier by putting things into more conversational terms if asked, but there weren't many of them.

I only had one humanities class big enough to need a TA. The professor, a big name in his field, went off on strange tangents which were entertaining but left us knowing little about the material except for anecdotes. Also in my economics intro class, the lecturer was in his 30th or 40th time going through the same lesson plan, was clearly bored and actively avoided giving examples for the abstract principles he was talking about. In both of those the TA was much more effective in explaining and communicating things to us.

I would say the size of a humanities class matters a lot more than the size of a science class.

But I suppose it's different in science/maths oriented institutions?

In the U.S. there's a fair amount of foreign exchange students in science and math. Bright guys/girls, and usually a very good grasp of the material. But from time to time communication is a bit of a pain in the ass.

When I took the first semester of a three semester "for majors" intoduction to physics class, the lecture section I had was taught by a young, probably assistant, professor. He was very good and was scheduled to teach a section of the next semester in the sequence, but was advised not to because at that stage in his career he needed to be more focused on research (and was not required to teach the next semester, obviously).

171,174,176: I did have that problem with a couple faculty members. Their writing was sufficient, but their speech was terribly difficult to understand. All were in math.

introduction

When I was at UNC almost all classroom educators in the Math Dept. were visiting professors. My Calculus II prof was from South Asia and had a better grasp of grammar and spelling than I did but even more of an accent. My Calculus III professor was a Russian whose second language was French and had learned English in the UK. His accent was an unintelligible mish-mash and he continually wrote in French on the chalkboard. The only reason I passed was that he realized his own limitations and let us take open-book and open-note exams combined with enough genuine interest to spend time reading my textbook and teaching myself the material.

174: Yes. It's very different. I had to dig up a quote that a good friend of mine left on her blog, from a professor addressing the starting econ and finance PhD students at Columbia:

"You all have different attributes. Some of you have excellent math backgrounds. Some of you are excellent economists. Some of you even speak English..."

Although my TAs from undergrad were all very fluent in English, I credit that to my institutions extremely small PhD program that skims almost exclusively from top European and North American students. I have not gone to any office hours or small seminars at my current American school, but very limited interactions with TAs through email and their occasional exam-proctoring suggest that fluency is much less common here.

But from time to time communication is a bit of a pain in the ass.

It's an enormous pain in the ass. It's almost impossible to convey to them what it is you need help with, either through speech or in an email - and it's literally impossible to get them to clarify a statement if they aren't good enough at English to phrase something in more than one way. It's frustrating for the TA and for the students. Except in labs, then it doesn't really matter if the person leading you through it is fluent in your language as long as he understands how the simple procedure works, which he does.

It's an enormous pain in the ass.

Heh. I was trying to soften it a bit, but yeah.

I have not yet had any problems with professors or TAs not being comprehensible. Maybe I'm just lucky.

172.3: dude, I'm already an elderly undergrad being (allegedly) taught by 20 year olds. I have to try and maintain a little dignity.

On TAs...

http://www.nber.org/papers/w10370

My Calculus III professor was a Russian whose second language was French and had learned English in the UK.

I had one professor who was Polish, learned English from a Dutchman while in France, and speaks faster than anyone I've ever met. Thank god he teaches in the age of PowerPoint, so we can have constant visual indications of what he's talking about.

His accent was an unintelligible mish-mash and he continually wrote in French on the chalkboard.

Hilaripus. I've never had a professor lapse into other languages, although sometimes when they have completely different names for the letters of the alphabet it leads to bewilderment.

And while we're at it, on peoples' motivations for giving money to fancy schools...

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13152

161: My limited experience says that this is quite likely true for low-level experimental classes -- e.g. intro to chemistry -- and but not at all true for low-level theoretical classes, e.g. calculus.

All that said, the foreign profs who barely spoke English were far more helpful to me than the Americans with tenure. No offense to the academicians among us but the first professor to break my spirit was an American who, when I told him I'd like some extra help or a recommended text or something in order to learn a specific mathematical technique he expected us to know but that I'd simply never been taught, looked at me with something of a cross expression and said that I should drop his class. He also announced at the beginning of that semester that because roughly 60% of the class were Chemistry majors and the other 40% were Mathematics or Math Education majors that he would be teaching to the Chem majors and the rest of us should either drop and try another semester or sign up for their Chemistry class (impossible unless one had the prereqs, which only Chem majors had) so we could keep up.

Gods, what an ass hat.

Yeah, I somehow managed to escape the curse of the non-Egnlish-speaking TA almost completely, with one notable exception--a physics TA from Austria who had a delightful way of pronouncing "acceleration" so that it sounded like "laceration." Freaky.

One of the best math TAs I ever had an incredibly thick accent, but it was English. I once said something like, "You're British, right, so. . " "Ahm not British! Ahm English!" But man, that dude could draw in fake 3D on a chalk board like nobody's business, and he saw your conceptual errors in microseconds. My many foreign-born professors were all perfectly intelligible, and their accents were more soothing than anything.

The most distracting lecturers are really smart Frenchmen. It's not b/c you can't understand them. It's b/c you spend the whole time zoning out on their wonderful voice, craving nutella or good cheese.

As a fellow Cal grad, I would also say that the profs themselves are aware that it has the rap of being hard for undergrads, but as a result, the ones I had were GLORIOUS lecturers. And maybe they could have not spent their time lecturing to a bunch of snot-nosed 18 year olds, but they did and it converted a lot of us into Anthro majors without ever really thinking about it. Besides, Cal's got one of the best anthro depts in the country - and had well-known profs, even as an undergrad. (Tim White, Alan Dundes, Nancy Scheper-Hughes... trust me, if you're into Anthro, they're rock stars.) But they all relied heavily on their TA's - the classes were just too big so you needed to rely on your sections if you had 'dumb questions.' Good news was that the TA's were fabulous and managed to stay that way, despite getting routinely screwed by the administration and having to strike. Made me think if I ever came into some millions, it'd go into the care and feeding of the TA's.

180: For some reason, my undergrad had more incomprehensible lecturers than TAs. One of the funniest moments of my undergrad education happened in the first day of one of the required first classes. All the math students in my entire year were in this course, so there were about 250 of us in a packed auditorium. This was the more theoretical initial course being taught, and was going to be the first introduction to lots of rigorous, axiomatic proofs for most of the students.

The professor comes in and starts talking with a thick eastern European accent, and only about a quarter of it is intelligible. People start to get nervous and look around, but pick up their pencils waiting for him to start writing on the board (all our courses were taught off lecture notes transcribed in class, so the lecturers had to write everything on the board). He picks up the chalk, and it's chicken scratches. Maybe every other word or variable is somewhat legible. I looked around the auditorium and could see scores of spirits breaking in front of my eyes as people sighed deeply, lay down their pencils, and settled back for a looooong term.

I ever came into some millions, it'd go into the care and feeding of the TA's

Bless you. May you grow rich and remember this idle comment.

I think my poli sci class had 36 sections and 18 TAs.

I went to two UCs and one Cal State (CalPoly, which is widely thought to be the best of the Cal State schools). Being at a teaching university is incredibly different. I can say with zero hesitation that my best teacher at Berkeley was an average teacher at CalPoly. It makes an amazing difference when the professor is at the institution to teach. I honestly don't know if I would send my hypothetical child to a research institution if she had other choices.

I ever came into some millions, it'd go into the care and feeding of the TA's

Bless you. May you grow rich and remember this idle comment.

Well, it was going to be that, or some unspeakably ugly piece of public art, right in front of Sproul Hall...

I never had a problem with actual PhD professors being incomprehensible. All of them had been in an English-speaking environment at least since they were PhD students themselves (at least 10 years). With TAs it's a different story, if they got a bachelor's degree in China or Taiwan, passed the TOEFL based on memorization and reading and writing, and have not been surrounded by English speakers for very long at all.

My intro to irrigation class had a lecture and lab. The guy teaching the lecture was new to the class, so in addition to teaching the lecture, for that quarter he attended every single lab, which was taught by a different full professor. When I had question in lab, I could ask questions of two full professors.

We didn't have glamorous rock star professors at CalPoly, but they didn't leave mid-semester to go consult for the Clintons, either. And they cared about their boardwork! They held so many office hours! Their lectures were so clear!

Made me think if I ever came into some millions, it'd go into the care and feeding of the TA's.

Just don't be like the wealthy alum of a certain graduate department who had to be talked out of the idea of buying a large house in the town next to the college for all/some of the graduate students in the department to live in for free.

Megan, were you in engineering at Cal? My understanding is that that varies wildly by major.

Hee. Intro to Irrigation reminds me of a childhood friend who put on an early, just-out-of-high-school resume that one of his summer jobs was a "Fluid Flow Engineer." Which is to say that he spent his summer moving irrigation pipes. (Fun fact - he got his masters in beermaking from Davis. He's now an organic farmer back in our hometown and apparently doing well.)

masters in beermaking

Undergraduates of the world: if you are applying to law school because graduation is coming up, you're pretty good at the school thing, and you don't know what else to do, there is an alternative!

201: heh. I could see how that could seem like a good idea if you weren't thinking about it too hard.

Molecular Cell Biology for three years, then two years of Environmental Science. I'd say I got a pretty solid sampling of the lower division science courses, and they thought their mission was to weed out students, not support them. I also took languages every semester I was there, and was consistently impressed with the TAs and lecturers in the language programs.

But what I was impressed with at Berkeley, skill at teaching itself and dedication to students, is commonplace and expected at CalPoly. (I can't speak to the other CalStates, because I'm told CalPoly is unusual.)

201: Voyeur-dorm style, I hope?

118: Yes to some of those, but being a certified public accountant requires 120+ hours and passing an exam in many states. CC's good for college credit transfers (though I still think there's more good done by funding better branch campuses), but a technical or business college seems to provide those skills better than a CC. (This may vary by region.)

he spent his summer moving irrigation pipes.

He spent his summer busting his ass. That's a lot of labor. If he's an organic farmer now, he must like that much work.

I think I did it a handful of times with a friend (helping her with her 'chores' as she grew up on a farm - I was a townie, thank goodness, and didn't have to deal with this except when her chores interfered with our running-around time and I'd help out). It was AWFUL. AWFUL. AWFUL. Dirt + California hardpan + water = sticky, boot-eating glue.

I'd rather muck out a barn any day after that.

I suspect that the rumors of the non-English speaking TA are greatly exaggerated.

No. No. No.

I mean, not that I'd want to, you understand. Just given the choice and all...

206: Ah, well, MCB is pretty freakin atrocious. I switched from MCB to physics precisely b/c physics was so much nicer. Which, when you think about it, is mildly insane, since I wasn't particularly better at physics at all. I think MCB is pathologicallly atrocious because of all the pre-meds---they sap the professors of any desire to care. If you go back to my summary, you'll see that there's a strong overlap between the worse classes and their pre-med population. Carolyn Bertozzi was a notable, amazing exception, but she was still an energetic new professor then, so who knows. Even when I was MCB, I hung out with the Integrative Bio club---much nicer people. And while the physics department is great, the professors usually dread teaching bio students. ( I opted for the physics for scientists and engineers, and that's how I got sucked into the major.) So I stand by my assertion that there are plenty of really good professors at Cal, but it is a strong function of department and major.

Moira, if it isn't secret, where was that farm? I did a summer in the Sacramento Valley and remember the Sacramento clay well. "Acre under each foot" was the saying, and you'd be walking on four and five inch thick clay snowshoes.

And then one time, as we were finishing up our sampling and starting to trudge our gear back to the truck, one of the field workers came over to make a few trips with us. I couldn't believe he did that. He'd been carrying pipe since six in the morning, and he was still willing to walk out into those furrows? No girls are that cute.

So I stand by my assertion that there are plenty of really good professors at Cal, but it is a strong function of department and major.

I'm fine with that assertion, but then I went to a place where that level of teaching competence was the expected norm, because it was a teaching institution. And I decided I liked it.

I'll email you. It's small enough that my cover will be blown! (Seriously, I live in fear of one day my folks, bored by the t.v. offerings in whatever old age home we've carted them off to, finding my blog.)

Without taking away from your experience of UC / Cal Poly, Megan, I wouldn't generalize to all research / teaching dyads, or even attribute the difference to the institutional differences. Correlation blah blah causation, and all that. Especially because Cal State universities put increasing pressure on their faculty to publish, nowadays.

147, 154: The advantage of post-HS education is now at two levels: one, the MA level (or a year past bachelors, e.g. Med Tech) which gives entry to actual career jobs; and two, tech school certificates, giving access to high-end labor jobs.

A BA or BS, especially in the liberal arts, doesn't get you much of anything. HS teachers and possibly social workers have 4-year degrees. Most other career jobs ar 4-years plus.

I went to a top-250 undergrad school and, like many of the other graduates of that school, ended up staying in the same career track I'd paid for my schooling with.

201, 205: Gotta say that I'm not seeing the imminent disaster in that plan, just some minor daftness. Could anyone enlighten me?

To add to 218, most of the various jobs I worked in between 1975 and 2002 now require additional formal training. I couldn't work now in any of the three fields I was once qualified in.

219: Would you really want to live with *all* the students in your department? The same people you're stuck with much of the day? And have very little excuse not to live with them?
There is something charmingly Hogwartsian about it though.

Yeah, slol, you're likely right. I don't have any experience with the other Cal States. UCB and UCD were more like each other than either was like CalPoly. But I should restrict my generalizations about teaching institutions to saying that CalPoly took it very seriously and the results were amazing to someone who'd been through five years at Berkeley.

218: I assume you're excluding tech from your calculations? Because it isn't like that at all. You can get a career job without even a BA, as long as you've got the chops. Certifications are important in IT to some degree, and it's less of a free-for-all than it was, but certainly it's nothing like the picture you're painting.

I seem to know quite a lot of people who have careers with their B.A.s, and only one of them is a high school teacher.

221: Ok, that was the minor daftness I was seeing. That does make sense, though a lot of my friends in PhD programs seem to only hang out with their fellow programees anyway for lack of spare time and anyone else they know in the area.

Also, 223 is completely correct, even for some people from the humanities. I currently work for a rather nice company that hires almost all of its workers out of undergrad, though admittedly it pulls almost exclusively from schools in the top 50 or thereabouts. Even my film major friend just got a job here on a recommendation because he showed intelligence and some investment knowledge in the interviews.

Agreed on tech, although it's getting a little harder to get by without a degree of some sort. Our chief systems architect has a G.E.D., but he's pretty unusual. But getting an engineering/CS degree is much more like learning a trade than getting a broad liberal arts education.

though a lot of my friends in PhD programs seem to only hang out with their fellow programees

There is a big difference between having a friend set that draws entirely from your department and having a housemate set that includes your entire department.

JAC, I love my friends from my PhD program, but they are all---every single one---completely nuts.

A BS in engineering gets you a job. I was mostly thinking of the liberal arts. A BS in business, maybe.

My Senior year of college I took an accounting course at MIT. It was either that or the Kennedy school. The Business school didn't allow cross registration. There were a bunch of us who took the T over.

The Professor impressed on us the importance of going to the weekly section. I'd always gone to sections before and had mostly good TFs---though in Classics most of my classes were small enough not to need one. I went once. It was totally useless, since I couldn't understand what she was saying. I was taking the class pass/fail, so I never went again.

Academic philanthropy isn't as easy as one would expect, at least at the low end. After my father died my brother and I tried to set up a modestly endowed fund intended to help students in his field. We were guaranteeing $20k, but had plans for considerably more. The U of C (Santa Cruz) lied to us and took about $3k based on oral representations which they repudiated, and then they tried to deceive us in the written agreement. The professional association in his field signed an agreement, took the $20k, and then diverted part of the income for other purposes.

All we insisted on was that all the money should go to students, and that the decisions be made by a small faculty committee we named rather than by administrators, and our efforts failed. I no longer give anything to any charity.

This is what I get for commenting irregularly -- call and response about Second Sex separated by 70 places.

On 2 -- yes, I do think there's a lack of examination of potential psychological/behavioral differences in SS. These are, of course, debatable and speculative, etc. But I think it is almost beyond denial that men are, in the main, more disposed towards aggression and violence than are women, and that this difference has biological causes (it may be re-enforced by culture, of course).

On 4 -- yeah, that has some plausibility. And with 100 pages under my belt I can't say much more that's useful...

And I appreciate the smiley.

Cats and dogs, living together...

Hm, I suffered through only 2 courses, in undergrad, in which the instructor's accent was a serious problem. One a Mayahana Buddhism course: the sometime guest lecturer impenetrable in more ways than one, though I finessed it.

The other a Calc. III course, and I did not finesse that. I had some idea I might concentrate in particle physics (in retrospect, tee-hee); either that or philosophy. The physics right out after a crummy C or some such in that class.

I enjoy contemplating the vagaries that determine one's course in life.

Bostoniangirl: they changed the name of North House, huh? Years ago -- 20 years! -- South House was changed to, um, Cabot House, I believe, and we all refused to acknowledge it. Plus: Cabot? I mean, come on.

I mentioned that fact, that I'd heard from people in the 80's who refused to acknowledge that South House had been renamed Cabot, but Cabot is so fitting. I mean, if there's going to be a Lowell House, there ought to be a Cabot.

Even Jesus Christ and God only got a handful of colleges named after themselves, and they're fuckin' loaded

Jesus, Isaac w-lfs-n and St John all managed to get colleges named after them at Oxford and Cambridge, as did Mary Magdalen if you're prepared to overlook a typing error, but God didn't. Of the four of them, w-lfs-n was the only one who achieved it the honest way.

Years ago -- 20 years!

How's your wrist?

235:

Mayahana s/b Mahayana

Hush, Ogged. It's fine. Hand, anyway.

231: I really think that's a reason to find your charities yourself. Of course, that's what you tried to do.

I think that non-profit administrators, school administrators at every level, and government administrators all have a particular oiliness about them. That comes from a public commitment to serve some kind of general welfare, which is however interpreted in terms of the institutional interest and institutional plans, together with the administrator's interest, and outsiders like donors functioning basically as resources or prey species.

D^2, don't tell w-lfs-n that. He's bad enough already. "Better than Jesus". It was bad enough when John Lennon was saying it.

Hand, anyway.

You also cited your wrist. I looked it up before posting, because "how's your hand" just sounds weird.

Okay fine.

Comity!

I think that non-profit administrators, school administrators at every level, and government administrators all have a particular oiliness about them.

John, I am shocked! shocked! to hear you say this!

The guy who founded Overstock was a philosophy grad student at Stanford, and went the Moira route: he donated some chunk of change to the department to be used on the grad students' behalf. So now we have more summer funding & whatnot. Hooray!

Overstock dot com? Charlatans!

OT, idle question: a feedback my bookshop received today from an online book-buying customer read, in toto:

"."

The quotation marks are not mine, but his. Is this some shorthand punctuational doohickey I'm unfamiliar with?

Cleary the tip of the arrow he's shot at you.

Mysterious, it was.

Were there previous messages from this person? Maybe it was a missing period from one of those.

Previous messages? I have no idea, I didn't check. A missing period should surely appear as:

.

Anyway, it was a feedback logged online. It was good for a laugh and an idle question. There are a lot of wonderfully charming or amusing feedback-type things like this: "This is a stupid book!" and so on.

It could be a less emphatic version of the (apocryphal?) "?" "!" author/publisher exchange.

232.2: Well, again, remember this was written at the beginning of the 20th century. I'm inclined to agree with you about, say, aggression--but then, really, we're talking about men from about 18-30, ish, not all men. In any case, I *think* for the sake of the argument she's actually making, it's not relevant if there are behavioral differences. Her point is just that we think of the "human" as "male" (only slightly less now than we did then)--e.g., pregnancy is an aberration from "normal" life. Physical differences, I think, are a perfectly good proxy for the larger argument that there are in fact two (really, more than two, but let's stick with the m/f dichotomy) varieties of humanity, and both are equally valid.

210: God, I miss mucking out barns. The summer I did that, my arms looked *awesome*.

re: 254

Well, it was written in the middle of the 20th century, surely? [being pedantic] Published in '49.

All right, I'm shitty with the moderns. Sue me.

21: (Lurker very late to the thread, and way off the current topic.) Like JM, I had a great-great-great-grandfather named Philander. Mine was Philander Baldwin -- shot and killed in 1873 in a gun fight in Winona County, Minnesota, after being caught fooling around with his cousin's wife. Not the funniest name in his family, nor the only odd death: his father-in-law Orange Greenman went through the ice on Skaneateles Lake in a stage coach.

"Orange Greenman" is a great name.

It's like, does he support the English or the Irish? You just can't tell.

"Orange Greenman" is a great name.

'Experience Bliss' is delightful. I wonder if she was related to Constant Bliss. (Incidentally, the linked site indicates that the marker shown is in New Hampshire, but it's actually Vermont.)

262: Yes, probably -- his family apparently traces to Rehoboth, Mass, where she was born, so I'd guess they were some sort of cousins. But she was born in 1649 and he in 1746

"Moses Sleeper" isn't a slouch of a name either.

Favorite 18thC family name of mine: Pielitiah. (Sp?)

Delegate to the Mass. convention that ratified the Constitution; he voted nay.

Wow. Is there some particular ethnicity/religious affiliation that explains the great names, or did your family just get lucky?

237...Jesus, Isaac w-lfs-n and St John all managed to get colleges named after them at Oxford and Cambridge, as did Mary Magdalen if you're prepared to overlook a typing error, but God didn't.

Pwned, dsquared. St John's, Oxford is named after the Baptist. St John's, Cambridge is named after the Evangelist. Completely different people.

Isn't it odd that "philander" should mean "someone who likes women"? Surely "philogyne" would be better?

Need more children. Another set of twins to name Experience and Increase, maybe, and one to call God Shammgod. And a brood for recycling names from the Italian side of the family: Fortunata, Assunta, Constanzio...

Philander must mean "Xenophile". But it could be the opposite of Philhomo.

266: No particular reasons for the odd names as far as I know. I bet any family can find a few Almonds and Electas if they look hard enough. I've got a Comfort Goodfellow among the direct ancestors (her married name), but the grandfather with a given name of Comrade is my favorite historical remnant of Wobblies in the family.

Wasn't Cotton Mather's grandpa Increase Mather? Or something like that?

237: I was counting the Trinity Colleges as a point for god as well as Jesus. My own alma mater translates to "God with us", which I also consider a point in both the Jesus and the god columns.

But when you start counting Corpus Christi, Christ's, Christchurch, etc., it's a pretty safe lead for the boy.

242: Don't worry. w-lfs-n College is pretty tiny and crappy, out in the distant wilds of Cambridge. They're a grad-only college and mostly a source of amazing rugby players studying who-knows-what as far as I can tell. Jesus and friends got their names on all the prime real estate.

272: Father.

Philander must mean "Xenophile". But it could be the opposite of Philhomo.

Because "homo" is "the same" in Greek and "ander" is "other" in German? You're losing me here.

I leave a lot of people in the dust, ajay.