Category: Assignment

EveRy University: The Real Perspective of the College Student

I stumbled upon this YouTube video titled, “Honest University Commercial,” and automatically thought to share it with the class. It’s a comic mock commercial for an institution called, “EveRy University,” where the actors [sarcastically] highlight the major problems within higher education. We’ve spoken about many of these issues throughout the semester and as funny as this video seems to be, it’s still bringing attention to a very serious matter. Some of the problems stressed in the commercial are: price of institutions (tuition, dorming, meal plans, books), student debt, the decreasing value of a degree in terms of employment, core curriculum, etc…I highly recommend watching this video not just for laughs, but to also confirm the seriousness of the issues we’ve discussed and stressed throughout this semester. This class was a great ending to our Macaulay seminars and I want to thank you all for making it so enjoyable.

Enjoy your summer guys!

Single Parents Getting a Second Chance in Higher Education

This article from Inside Higher Ed titled, For Arkansas Single Parents, A Scholarship that Helps Pay for Living Expenses, explains Hilary Clinton’s dedication to helping single parents in college. Hilary helped get the scholarship program, “Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund,” off the ground and was board president for 3 years. This program provides discretionary aid to low-income single parents in attending college, preventing the rise of dropouts. I had no idea that such programs existed. Generally single parents have less financial access to higher education because of childcare and transportation. Before single mother, Amanda Condon, knew she could go back to college she stated, “There was no way I was going to be able to go to school, and provide for my kids, and maintain my grade average.” After being helped by this scholarship, she will be graduating [debt-free] with an associate’s degree in emergency management.  Inspired by the success of this scholarship program, Clinton proposed to expand this initiative worldwide and call it “Student Parents in America Raising Kids, or SPARK,” where up to million student parents single parents would be granted as much as $1,500 per year for expenses like child care and other implications. This nationwide effort to help single parents could be extremely beneficial in improving the future of both higher education and the economy. Ruthanne Hill, executive director of the Arkansas fund, states that this program could boost state economies. If more people graduate from college, they will be “earning higher salaries, paying taxes and putting more money into the economy.”

The potential benefits that SPARK has to offer to both our economy and higher education system really resonated with me. Everyone deserves equal opportunity in getting an education and the fact that the costs of a babysitter or gas for a car have been preventing this concept really upsets me. I really hope this program becomes fully implemented, so that parents don’t have to give up on their education and can pursue the careers they’re most passionate about. Arkansas has been doing it right with the “Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund”; and I hope America follows in their footsteps soon with “SPARK.”

Final Paper (Exam) Assignment – Design your own College

Seminar 4, Spring 2016
Final paper 2016

Final Paper Assignment:  Design your own College

If you were creating an institution of higher learning from scratch, to survive and thrive in the coming decades, what would it look like? The final assignment in the course, in lieu of a final examination, is for you to design what you consider to be the ideal modern college or university for the future of New York City. You should use the information and analyses from this semester to create what in your view is an ideal institution of higher education to further the viability of NYC. You should not simply describe a current college or university, even Macaulay; try to be innovative within some practical boundaries. You can give your institution a name, a logo, a motto, and even a mascot if you want and decide where to put it.

Points to consider/cover (not exhaustive)

What will your institution’s mission be, and what is the rational for this mission?

  • Will it be a public, private or for-profit institution?
  • What type of institution will this be (community college, 4-year college, masters University, Research University)?
  • Will you have a “bricks and mortar” campus? Where?
  • If “bricks and mortar”, will your institution be residential or commuter?
  • Who will run your institution? What kind of governance will you have?
  • How will you fund your institution? (more on budgets later)
  • Who will be your target student audience, and what entry characteristics will they have?
  • How many students will you have at your institution?
  • Will the preponderance of financial aid be merit or need-based?
  • If you provide other financial aid or resources for students, where will the funding come from?
  • Will you have academic departments?
  • What will your curriculum be like (areas, general education, majors, something else)?
  • How will your students be graded?
  • What kinds of pedagogy will you ask your faculty to use to teach this curriculum? (assume you do not have to fight with accrediting or state agencies about changing any rules about the method for delivery of instruction)
  • What kinds of credentials will you be seeking for your faculty and what will they spend their time doing?
  • Will faculty be able to obtain tenure or not? Why/Why not?
  • Will you have serious (Division 1) inter-collegiate athletics?
  • How will you know if your institution is realizing your mission? This is called “Outcomes Assessment”.
  • How will your institution advance the goal of improving the future of New York City?
  • You can deal with other issues and questions as well but you should explain why you are making the decisions you are making. What problems or challenges will your institution be designed to address?

You will also have to run an institution that can cover its costs by income from tuition, donations, endowment income and research recoveries. I will give you some guidelines for budgets at a later date, but as the stock market is in good shape, I will make a donation for your endowment to get you started (see below).

  • Keep in mind the following NYS Department of Education Rules: For a bachelor’s degree, you need a major and some general education requirements, but students must in some way accumulate 120 credits, which traditionally has represented forty 3-credit courses or the equivalent. The state says that a 3 credit course must meet for 45 contact hours (an hour is generally 50 minutes but that’s a detail).  There may be other ways of meeting these requirements.
  • You must deal with the economics of your new college and will need to develop a basic annual budget for your college.
  • To start your college, I will give you a donation of $100M which is your basic endowment (if you want you can name a building after me). You can figure that the endowment will generate approximately 5% in income a year. In general, you want to keep from spending your endowment, and if financial times are good, you may want to reinvest some of the income from the endowment to increase the base for generating future endowment income.
  • You will have to generate the resources to run your college from tuition, overhead from research grants, and donations (“Development income” in college-speak) if yours is a private college, and from local or state funding if your college is public. Tuition can come from student grants or loans as well as direct payments. You can calculate overhead from faculty grants, if faculty do research at your college, at 50% of each dollar brought in for research. If you are a public university, you may also get some money from your state or city. You can calculate getting about 25-30% of your total budget from public funding if yours is a public college.
  • For the purposes of calculating the cost of faculty, you can figure an average annual salary of $100,000 for each full professor, $75,000 for each Associate Professor, and $50,000 for each Assistant Professor. Adjuncts will cost you $3,000 for each course.
  • The President will make $300,000. Each Vice President will make $200,000. Each Dean will make $150,000.
  • Health benefits will cost about 40% of your total salary expenditures.
  • The costs of running the buildings (lights, power, toilet paper) do not have to be estimated but these are real costs in the real world.
  • Develop ratios to explain the number of administrators, staff, and faculty costs, etc. based on the number of students you are serving and your overall budget.