Ivy Covered Walls are Increasingly Printed As Legal Tender

Columbia University receives a $400 Million gift and Antioch College closes. Something is very wrong here!

The increasing disparities in income in our country reaches to all segments of our society. As someone who has dedicated his professional life to public higher education, I am increasingly unsettled by the quest for cash that has infected all aspects of higher education. Columbia University just received a gift of $400 million from one of the wealthiest people in the USA, John Kluge a CC '37 grad. This is just one part of Columbia's capital campaign to raise $4 billion.

At the same I read today that Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH will be closing and reorganizing. Antioch is closing due to "declining enrollment, a small endowment, and an overwhelming dependence on tuition revenue." Antioch recognized by many as a bastion of alternative approaches to learning has many noted alumni including Coretta Scott King and Stephen Jay Gould. Many of the innovations introduced at Antioch are accepted learning practices throughout higher education.

Much of Mr. Kluge's Columbia's recent gift will be dedicated to helping students with financial need. Most students with high need depend on loans to pay the gap between the grants they receive and the remaining portion of their college costs. The cost of attending Columbia including room and board, books, tuition and fees totaled $47,229 this past academic year. At first glance, this appears to be a good thing given how much it costs to attend Columbia!

Antioch's cost per students for this past year was $39,447. Apparently it wasn't cheap to immerse oneself in one USA's most alternative learning environments. Antioch's total endowment was $30 million. Not enough to keep the college afloat.

Chasing big time donors for cash is a full-time occupation for college and university presidents at large and small institutions. It is common practice for a college president to assume the role as the chief public affairs and fund raising officer of an institution and another individual, normally the chief academic officer, becomes the internal operational officer. Long gone are the days that college presidents ate lunch in the faculty club and chatted about big ideas with their academic colleagues. They are on the road courting potential donors, politicians, and influential alumni.

In a recent article, Walter Kimbrough, the President of Philander Smith College, bemoans that kind of philantropy that makes Columbia richer and ignores the colleges like Antioch or Philander Smith. Mr. Kluge's gift will help only a small portion of all of Columbia's students who are labeled as financially needy. Only 16% of columbia students apply for the Pell Grant each year. Believe it or not 60% don't apply for any financial aid and have the resources to meet the $47,000 costs!

At Philander Smith, a historically black liberal arts college in Little Rock, AK, 83% are Pell Grant eligible and will graduate with more loans to pay off than Columbia grads. Mr. Kimbrough goes further and sites a study published by the Education Trust that reported "In 2003, about 100 research extensive universities spent $257 million in financial aid for students from families earning over $100,000 a year, almost as much as that spent on students from families earning $20,000-40,000, and more than that spent on students from families earning less than $20,000." The Columbia Universitys and the University of Michigans of the world are using their institutional resources to induce the best and brightest to enroll on their campus who have financial capacity while at same time ignoring the needs of those who have real financial challenges.

The authors of the Trust report go further, “these universities find it more important to use their own money to buy high-income students, who will almost inevitably attend an elite institution no matter what, than to expand the enrollment of… low-income students.” Why? High income students are far easier to educate. They add to the prestige of the college and university by attending and adding their high SAT scores to the institution's ranking in US News and World Report. And hopefully, will become the kind of wealthy alumni like Mr. Kluge who will give back at some time in the future.

Higher education attempts to cloak itself with the mantle that we are creating new knowledge and innovation, educating for democracy and valuing diversity in our students and faculty. However, we are infected with the fund raising disease. Yes, just like the other aspects of our country, rich colleges are getting richer with country club facilities, wealthier and academically gifted students, and ever increasing endowments. At the same time, Antioch has to close its doors, Philander Smith continues to enroll poor students with many academic challenges, and college presidents are measured soley are their ability to raise money.