American Higher Learning:
Meeting #14 -- April 28
The Higher Learning In Your/Our Time
Housekeeping Chores:
3rd substantive presentation -- due May 5th
Optional self-evaluation of performance -- e-mail to me by May 8th
Student evaluations -- end of this meeting/volunteer??
Columbia In the Wake of '68
Tuesday, April 30th -- Police bust
Same afternoon -- Creation of Faculty Executive Committee -- Alan Westin of AHFG
and Michael Sovern of CU Law School -- Becomes Sovern's committee
-- > direct dealings with trustees
à appointment of Cox Commission
--> get criminal proceedings dropped -- over initial trustee/alumni objections
-> appointment of acting president
à search for president
à creation of University Senate
Kirk -- out in August (Andrew Cordier as Acting pres.)
UN diplomat/ trouble-defuser -- ran up debt
Truman -- out in December -- to Mholyoke
Why not Sovern?? -- Outsider // too young/ three divorces…
William McGill -- named president in January 1970 -- here in Summer of '70 à 1980
Reputation as a stand-up guy to confrontation -- Herbert Marcuse/Angela Davis at UCSD
What of Radical Students? --
Strike Coordinating Committee broke up into competing camps: those for carrying the revolution into the streets (SDS) and those focusing on "Restructuring the University";
SDS-led seizure of a CU apartment building on 114th and reoccupation of Hamilton Hall (May 22/23) lost them much of the support they had in immediate wake of the bust
Suspensions of 7 involved in March demonstration -- 66 more following Hamilton II (no one suspended for April occupations)
Black students -- no serious disciplining followed; gym project scratched; recruitment of black students and faculty beefed up; modest move toward curricular inclusion of African-American experience -- waited on infusion of $$ -- John Kluge in late 1970s
Some SDS leaders move into Weatherman movement -- Ted Gold in bomb-making brownstone in Village -- MRudd to Canada for awhile
Trustees -- pretty significant shakeup -- average tenure of trustees atKirk's inauguration in
Late 19th C -- Trustees on for four decades…
1908 -- 6-year alumni-elected trustees -- companionable ones than made life trustees
1953 -- 24 years -- 5 > 30 years
Early 1970s -- no more life trustees (12 years max for 12 trustee-elected); Senate to
elect 6 for 6 yrs;
Alums ditto
1990s -- average tenure about 8 years
Back From the Brink --
1970s -- Hard times -- tenure freeze at CU/ brutal contraction of budgets to get into
balance by 1978; dealing with never-that-generous-but-now-disaffected alumni…
NYC near bankruptcy in 1975; stock market collapse in early 70's; not a nice place to live (MS Heights lots drearier than now)
"Nor was there any gentle way to extract Columbia from the near-catastrophe into which it had fallen in 1968. The fiscal measures necessary to pull the University back from the brink were brutal, and nearly every pressure group with a stake in Columbia's operations objected to them." William McGill (1985)
Eliminating structural deficit -- endowment being drained, rather than growing
Relatively little hiring -- faculty aging -- losing some names -- DBell/PGay/PKusch/Mharris/Sbercovitch/Nathan Huggins/Jacqueline Barton
Hand-to-hand combat with Barnard during BC presidency of Jacqueline Mattfeld
-- talk of merger -- or cutting loose…
1974 -- BC Tenure procedures give CU the final say; X-registration $$ a big issue…
Some self-assessing going on -- "Forty years ago Columbia was generally perceived to be one of the few distinquished universities in the United States. Today it is among a larger number of universities in the first rank" -- Presidential Commission on Academic Priorities [Marcus Commission] 1979
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1980s -- Turn-around decade
Sovern's presidency -- smart labor lawyer -- great fundraiser among NYC's wealthy Jewish families and new money folks
1983 -- Decision to make CC co-educational -- mechanism to increase size of College while improving its academic selectivity -- the last of the Ivies to go co-ed….
Begins shift of University in direction of the historically neglected College à Lerner Hall
A dicey time for Barnard -- redundant???
Tough president -- Ellen Futter (31 as president -- to 1994)
In the late 1980s at Barnard
Applications -- <2000
Acceptances -- 50%? [1000]
To get class of 500 [Way behind Wellesley, behind Smith, about even with Bmawr]
Hard controlling financial aid -- high % of students needing financial aid
Stay need blind??
1998 -- Barnard
Applications à 5000
Acceptances -- 20% [1000]
To get class of 500+ Most selective women's college in country
Need blind still in place
CC -- Class of 2001
Applications > 11,000 (up 9%)
Accept 2000
955 places (18% acceptance)
In 1980s -- Other places struggling
Yale -- labor problems/New Haven
UC Berkeley -- From Reagan to Aaction controversies (declining out-of-staters)
Chicago -- budgetary problems
Women's Colleges -- Mount Holyoke/Smith
1985 -- Sale of Rockefeller Center property of 11.7 acres for $400,000,000 (>1/4 its endowment) -- CU goes more heavily into equities market; the next decade a good one to be in the market
Columbia in late 1990s --
Endowmwnt -- 1994 -- <$2,000,000,000
1996 -- $2,500,000,000
1997 -- >$3,000,000,000 (>50% in 3 years) #9/5 among privates?
$2.2 billion 10-year capital campaign
Barnard -- 1990 --<40,000,000 [money in Treasuries//stocks]
1996 --<90,000,000
1997 -- $118,000,000 (up 30% in a year)
$100,000,000 capital campaign underway
CU Trustees in 1998 -- Shorter tenures/younger/ in their 50s
5 women
2 blacks
2 Asian-Americans; 1 Asian
7 or 8 Jews; Any Episcopalians??
More with CU connections (14) than CC (6)
More (7) from outside NYC
Lawyers and/or on Wall Street
No clergy; no regular academics
CU Faculty -- Substantial #s of women (and with tenure) -- 15%? -- 2% in early
1970s??
Minorities on Faculty -- Blacks
Asians
BC Faculty -- 20% minorities??
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Academic Issues of Our/Your Times:
Multiculturalism and Its Discontents (William Bennett, Allan Bloom/Dinesh D'Souza)
The content of our curriculum…
2. Affirmative Action in student admissions and faculty recruitment
Debaky and all
Chronicle of Higher Education -- April 24, 1998 -- "Report Blasts Research Universities for Poor Teaching of Undergraduates" chaired by president of SUNYStBrook and sponsored by CFATeaching
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