Baruch President S. David Wu asks us to reimagine the college experience, “where the passage to adulthood is not merely done in a protected, ivory tower campus environment but also through service in the community.”
In my last blog, I started a conversation about our future by identifying what parts of the past we want to reclaim and re-imagining a future we want to shape together. In this blog, I share my thoughts about a specific aspect of that future—how we might leverage and meet the needs of the fast-changing, hybrid world around us.
Society is transforming before our eyes. While most changes have been underway for quite some time, the rate of change seems to be accelerating. Whereas our own interpretations of these shifts may vary, most of us can agree that we are witnessing some of the fastest and most disruptive changes in our lifetime. Further, these developments have a profound impact on us in educational institutions—thrusting new problems before us and accentuating the need for creative solutions.
We should strive for a future in which we are not merely to survive, but to thrive. Before jumping into new solutions, however, we should be more deliberate about identifying the problem we’re trying to solve. Let me propose that our rapidly changing world and the “problem” we are trying to solve stem from two main sources, which started out separately but have since converged and now pose significant challenges to every aspect of higher education: (1) the value proposition of a college education, and (2) the way we interact, work, and learn.
Is a College Degree Worth the Cost?
The value proposition of a college education is in question today more than ever before. It was challenged for years prior to the emergence of the pandemic, but has become more pointed for many academic institutions both during and, in all likelihood, after the current crisis subsides. A recent survey by Strada Education Network found that the percent of people who think higher education is worth the cost decreased from 77 percent in 2016 to 59 percent in 2020.
Over the past 100 years, a “typical” college education in the U.S. has been conceived as a “bundled service”—an education combined with a socially maturating, residential campus experience. Many see their college years as a passage to adulthood—a safe and nurturing environment that helped them decide who to become in life. A college education also frequently meant frontloading a lifetime’s worth of formal education into four years—with many students going into debt to attain that education, expecting that their investment would provide a lifetime return.
An inconvenient truth is that this model no longer works for a majority of our population, especially communities of color, immigrants, and students from low-income families. The upfront cost is simply too high and the risks and obstacles are far too great for many average American families to afford. Prior to the pandemic, we were already starting to see two major trends: unbundling—separating residential campus experience and academic learning, and micro-credentialing—the idea that it is possible to achieve college-level credentials closely aligned with professional demands that are incrementally updated over time.
In earlier blogs, I touched on the historic and socioeconomic contexts of higher education and suggested that the lack of change and innovation in higher education can be understood through the lens of institutional isomorphism—the gravitational pull of conformity toward status quo and stagnation. I argued that this particular form of bundling and frontloading is yet another outcome of isomorphism. And since that’s what most institutions tend to do, we rarely question if that’s the best we can do.
Not only is the value proposition of higher education in question for individuals, it is in question for society at large. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of the Fiscal Service, in 2018 higher education institutions received more than $1 trillion from federal and nonfederal funding sources—educating roughly 20 million Americans. At the same time, higher education has increasingly become a closed circle: family affluence virtually ensures access to a college degree, which in turn enables economic opportunity and promises continued affluence for a relatively small fraction of the next generation to repeat the cycle. This model privileges the few and shuts out the many.
Is the World Really Turning Hybrid?
The way we interact, work, and learn is undergoing drastic changes, and like it or not, external pressure from society and the workplace will force us to deliver education differently in the future. According to a recent report, more than 40 percent of the American workforce has worked remotely since the pandemic began. Furthermore, about 20 million workers have moved residentially—many of them out of major cities—or are planning to do so. Many predict that, when “knowledge workers” return to the office after a year or more of working from home, they will want to maintain some degree of their newfound flexibility. These profound shifts in mindset and normality are motivating many organizations to rethink the balance of personal presence, proximity, and modalities of interaction in the workplace.
Less than two decades ago, many of us could not have imagined the way we use our phones today to access information and to interact. Before the pandemic, it would be just as difficult for us to imagine a future where we interact, learn, and work in a digitally-physically entangled hybrid world—a world where we collaborate in a virtually-connected workplace with some colleagues physically in the office, others working remotely, and some seamlessly combining the two.
To be sure, not everyone has the privilege of working from home, and no matter what the future holds, a majority of workers will continue to function in public, physical workplaces. Nonetheless, the profound shift into a hybrid environment will have a very real and direct impact on institutions of higher education. For instance, we used to assume that students who worked full-time would attend evening classes or interlace their work hours with class time. Will these students who now work from home three days a week make a special trip to take a class on campus? Previously, we assumed students would come to campus and go to five different offices to complete their class selection, financial aid, and registration. This is no longer the environment to which they are accustomed, and we will need to meet them where they are. To serve our students in this new, hybrid world, we need to leverage technology and innovation to create flexibility, mass customization, and personal engagement, while at the same time maintaining the quality and rigor of the education we provide. But that conversation is for another blog.
Dream It and Do It
What if there were an institution that had figured out how to offer a high-quality, 21st-century education that any middle- or low-income family could afford? An institution where the passage to adulthood was not merely done in a protected, ivory tower campus environment but also through service in the community? Where a faculty member would not only be “sage on the stage” but also “guide on the side,” providing hands-on learning where students could positively impact their field of study by learning through personal experience? What if professionals from the field mentored, assisted, and collaborated with students, helping them to understand the layers of knowledge needed to thrive in the workplace? What if professors taught every other semester in traditional formats and in off semesters conducted their instruction in community-based settings? What if students alternated between learning and working, curating part of their education based on their own intellectual and professional growth?
In many ways, Baruch is already on this path. Endowed with the richness of New York, the City is our laboratory, our classroom, and our campus. Many of our faculty have been taking students to see their future profession in action, to engage them in field work, or to immerse them in community-based actions. What if that became an integral part of a hybrid curriculum—where professors give some lectures online while spending the rest of the semester taking students into functioning businesses, facilitating community-based work, or curating opportunities for students to secure internships or field work?
Hundreds of volunteer-professionals—many of them Baruch alumni—are mentoring our students, providing them with priceless personal and professional guidance. What if that became a signature of a Baruch education—where every student benefitted from a mentor who helped them understand the layers of knowledge they will need to succeed in their chosen professions?
What if we offer our students their passage to adulthood—not in a cocooned campus environment, but through partnerships with world-class talents, organizations, and the cultural institutions surrounding us? What if we provide our students with every ingredient of a high-caliber education most “elite” institutions try to cultivate—but doing so without the substantial premium? What if we afford our students the confidence—and the knowhow—to create their own business, their own social action, and their own agenda for the future?
Dream it and do it. But we must dream it first. Emerging from the crises of 2020, our society is ready for change. As an institution that offers a strong and differentiating value proposition, we have an opportunity to emerge even stronger—as we embrace new ideas and technology to double down and increase the value of our education. It is time for us to stand up, to make a difference, and to create a new model of higher education.
37 Comments
Hello, President Wu. This all sounds like what a college education—anywhere—should already be. I am looking forward to your future blog posts that outline plans and processes that will be put in place to move Baruch College further in this direction.
President Wu, Very well thought out proposal. I look forward to future blogs and hope I can participate.
Good luck. Look forward to hearing more about the particulars of this transformation, especially as higher education has lost its way. Its business is model is based on rent-seeking, as it lobbies for expanding ‘free’ education and offers mostly useless degrees. $Trillions are gifted to Higher Ed, who can afford nicer building, fancier offices and more administrators to help shepard public policy and coffers toward getting more $trillions to further the cycle.
I hope President Wu’s vision of real education comes to fruition, and is not just the latest example of using visionary ideas and flowery speech to further advance the Higher Ed juggernaut.
When the federal government backs every loan, all the incentive is to raise the price. The whole point of the institution is to get that federal money – the tax exempt vehicle is the school.
I attended City College at a cost of $12 a semester as a student fee. It was the greatest education imaginable. It set the course of my life and I taught at CUNY for 40 years and during part of that time there was Open Enrollment which was of value for generations afterward. Free Higher Education is the key to success along with College administrators who are really interested in educating young people and not in rising in the academic ranks to receive salaries equivalent to the President of major corporations and support education for its own sake, research for gaining new knowledge and not for accumulating government and private grants to enhance the College and their own careers. These are the needs of the post-pandemic era.
Incredible. Like most of President Wu’s “insightful” messages, this blog post was all fluff and no real substance. It appears as though the future of Baruch in this post-COVID world is uncertain.
I second Dr. Rechman! Whether we go back to free education at CUNY, which we should, or whether we do not, Pres. Wu, another element in your thoughtful analysis has to be the fact that higher education has largely adopted the avarice of the corporate world.
Economics is literally about Economy, how to economize, how to do things in the most efficient and economical way possible. COVID will likely lead to a huge decrease in the amount that decrease that colleges, particularly “elite” colleges can charge. (Thus, btw making CUNY far more competitive.)
I would also add that, yes, much of what you outline is already taking place in many of our classrooms. However, instructors who are set in their ways (often older ones) simply will not change. But creative, innovative instructors (often younger, but sometime older) are all eyes and ears for this kind of thing. So we should identify these instructors and their techniques and have them cross-fertilize their pedagogies.
Going forward we might try and shift staff resistant to creative change more towards the high level classes where students have the basics and are just finishing up. It is the newer students coming in who very much need to be exposed to this creative kind of learning and as they move through the years over time the instructors unable to adapt will gradually dwindle in number.
Mr Lewin,
I believe you are severely mistaken if you think free college will force Elite Colleges to charge less and ultimately make CUNY more competitive. Many reasons for this, one is the reason why Elite and mid-tier colleges can charge 200k+ for a 4 year degree: namely that a student can take out a loan (backed by the Fed) for 200k without collateral.
And by my estimation, you incorrectly assume that free education will mean better education. High School is free and last I checked, the majority of schools in disadvantaged districts are failing the communities that need a good education the most – communities that lack the generational wealth.
“I would also add that, yes, much of what you outline is already taking place in many of our classrooms. However, instructors who are set in their ways (often older ones) simply will not change. But creative, innovative instructors (often younger, but sometime older) are all eyes and ears for this kind of thing. So we should identify these instructors and their techniques and have them cross-fertilize their pedagogies.”
Seems like you’ve already made the determination that you belong to this enlightened cadre.
Dear Concerned Alumni,
Thank you for your comments. You write, “Seems like you’ve already made the determination that you belong to this enlightened cadre,” meaning creative, innovative instructors. To begin with, I never said that creative people were enlightened or above, in any conceivable way, people who are not creative.
Concerned Alumni, we always had people in the human race who would make excellent aviators, but they never got to display that skill until the plane was invented. And we always had people who could be excellent baseball players but only a very few of them were born after baseball was invented.
As the nature of our external reality radically changes, as now, now we need the Dreamer. But we also need those who are fluent, and conversant with the tried and true. There is a place for everyone. And I said that clearly. And no one is higher than anyone else. We are a team. And as for me being a creative person, if you think I am, I take that as a compliment. Thank you!
Inspiring words indeed. We can all dream it Dr. Wu but the reality is where we live in. As the old saying goes, “It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It”. Higher ed will not materially change on its own. No industry ever does…but the pace of disruption by outsiders will increase at an accelerating pace.
Hello President Wu. I too echo the concerns of my fellow Commenters such as Concerned Alumn, Rechman, Lewin and Goga. I will not beat a dead horse, however, change is necessary and would like you to know am at the ready to assist in the challenges we face in our ever changing norms of Education, so that we may lead the way for others to follow. So President Wu, how can I assist?
Ms. Arango were you in my class in 2011?
No, I am new to Baruch.
Thank you for engaging these important questions, Dr. Wu! We cannot however have this conversation without considering on every level the well- documented ways in which female students and faculty with dependent children face many challenges when attempting to teach or learn remotely. Unless free, high quality universal childcare is part of our new normal, women will fall behind professionally and families will suffer.
As soon as I read “the value proposition of a college education,” I knew we were doomed. The Amazonification of college (and life) is what we should be declaring war upon—not what universities should train students for.
Has a college persident ever been hired who knows how to manage a budget and think innovatively about the college’s mission?
Dr. Wu, perhaps you can start improving the education offered at Baruch by dismissing underperforming professors who: lack effective communication skills, regurgitate the textbook without further explanation or insight, or who don’t care to engage the students. There are plenty of good professor’s at the school, but there are a whole lot that simply clock in and clock out, and only care about the check. They lack passion and in turn extinguish the passion of many students, causing them to transfer out or quit altogether. Let’s face it, the main lure of Baruch is a good business education at a truly affordable price. That being said, you get what you pay for. Add to all this the lack of in person instruction that you seem to want to move away from, and the result is isolated and uninspired students. Young adults need social interaction with their peers and professors face to face, not through a camera. Don’t overestimate the power of interpersonal skills in the real world, which by the way, will resume post pandemic. Social education is just as important as book smarts, maybe more. I don’t think you can assume that because people were relegated out of necessity to work and study from home, that they want to stay hidden away going forward. Depression in general is at an all time high. We need to get rid on online only classes and get back to in person. Dr. Wu you can choose to label beautiful cohesive campuses as “ivory towers in a cocooned campus environment”, but those environments foster comraderie amongst all of its people. They also offer plenty of internships, mentors, and dedicated advisors. As a Baruch leader you don’t need to put down what our school lacks. We should not envy the institutions that have everything that our city university lacks, because we chose to come here with eyes wide open. Most of us are here because of proximity to home, family, jobs, and price.
So true, dreams are wonderful, but Dr. Wu needs to function in the current reality. This past year has been a learning process for all, but has also exacerbated the inadequacies of many Baruch professors, exponentially. On-line learning should not mean one live session and the other a pre-recorded video. Better yet are those professors that assign a textbook, drop a syllabus in your lap and send you on your way, with not even ONE live class. How on earth is this person being paid as a professor? Better yet, what are we paying tuition for? Oh wait, we need an “accredited” institution to sign off on a degree. It’s astonishing how “woke” Dr. Wu tries to portray himself through this blog. Even a blind person can see all the problems that are right in front of him now.
Dr. Wu, your students are suffering now, and you think it is more fitting to daydream?!
Hi Ida, you made several excellent points in your comments. I am distressed to hear that some of your experience with your online classes were poor, and am pleased that you feel “there are plenty of good professor at the school.” Continue to improve the quality of our instruction, online or in-person, is no doubt a top priority. The College Goals (https://president.baruch.cuny.edu/to-the-baruch-community/announcing-academic-year-2020-21-college-focus-goals/) I laid out for the year put forward concrete ways to help us improve students support and services, support faculty and staff in the rapid changing environment, and enhance our capability to deliver high-quality online and hybrid instruction (e.g., training, support, technical infrastructure). That said, the College has no intention to move away from in-person instruction, which will remain Baruch’s primary mode of education, once it is safe to do so.
You also made a great point about “interpersonal skills” and “social education,” which I completely agree. In fact, I spoke about this in my September and January blogs, and the College is working hard to enhance our ability to offer a holistic education, both inside and outside the classroom. The pandemic does pose significant challenges. The point I was trying to express in my blog is that the bundling of residential campus experience with academic learning, while valuable, added significant upfront costs to education. Specifically, room and board charges averaged $11,800 in 2018–19 for 4-year public colleges in the US, while the average tuition to attend CUNY (for NY State resident) is $6,930 per year. I believe there are alternative ways to achieve the results of residential campus experience, without the heavy premium.
My final point is that solving our immediate problems should not stop us from dreaming a better future. Only by doing so, can we truly improve. We recognize that many our students are suffering, and everyone I know at the College are working extremely hard under great challenges. Thank you again for speaking up and making your points.
Having read all your blogs to date, I remain in anticipation of the one which ascribes importance to quality academic programs and to contributory faculty research, the primary constituents of an academic institution’s reputation, which is the primary mechanism paving the way for students’ opportunities.
Forget it. Thus far, he has shown no interest in either true academic rigor or faculty scholarship. Just not a priority for CUNY’s many “stakeholders.”
Thank you Donald. I do speak to high-quality academic programs frequently, which I believe is what set Baruch apart. Everyday I am learning more about the specific areas of academic excellence at Baruch, which I will speak more of. As to faculty research, I have been an active scholar and researcher my entire career, and I am a firm believer that research and education present two sides of the same coin. Perhaps I have been taking these ideas for granted, and will speak more specifically about promoting research vitality at Baruch.
I couldn’t agree more re: the interconnection of “(1) the value proposition of a college education, and (2) the way we interact, work, and learn.”
No wonder the value of a college degree is being questioned — with schools like Baruch best positioned to changed this (both perception and reality) but often failing to do so. One reason the perceived value of a university degree is declining is, as pointed out here, that it merely perpetuates existing inequities and is increasingly out of reach for many, esp. those who need it most. Another reason, identified long ago, is unnecessary spending, such as on administrative posts, aka “administrative bloat.” Though CUNY, incl. Baruch, is striving to increase access to and success in higher education, it’s doing far too little about administrative bloat and related issues, like basing decisions on fiscal considerations rather than students’ best interest conceived more broadly; confusing visibility and acclaim with actual progress/ bienfait total; and rewarding sycophants with plum posts. From classes that are far too large, in excess of recommended enrolments and official enrolment caps, to services like advising and tutoring, which are still not sufficient to meet student needs, much work remains to be done — and ridding the university of do-nothing administrators and pencil pushers would be an excellent way to 1.practice what we preach; 2. free up funds to hire more faculty, tutors, librarians, and so forth so that students could be served better, and for essential programmes like SEEK.
Mr. Hu, thank you. Not only are you President Hu, but you are like a father to Baruch College. I am an alumni and graduated in 2014 (middle-aged). I went through struggles while attending Baruch. But because of my love for Baruch’s high standards and my high standards I never gave up even when graduating many years later. I believe in education and work. Baruch has inspired me to be the best in my career and to expand on technology. With advancement of Zoom and Microsoft Teams students and teachers can stay in touch amidst in changing times. Keep up the good work!
Ms. Younger,
Extending on your comments . . There is the short term future, that is, how Baruch will function in Fall 2021. There is the medium term, that is, the period of adjustment between Fall 2021 and the long term, that is, when we stabilize to a new normal, whatever that may be.
We should try to keep all three in mind, for what is good in the short term may hamper us in the long run. Yes, there are many balls in the air simultaneously. Nonetheless, we must try and determine the future. ( Determine means both to predict and to shape.) But no matter what we envisage, yes, technology will increasingly become both a tool and a medium.
I would like to make an additional comment that I didn’t make before on “Thriving in the New World”. After rereading it I came up with some creative solutions. You asked the question “Is the college degree worth the cost? Yes, students need an education so they can live and be the solution or solve a solution in a real world full of issues. If the emerging crises of 2020 caused a confidence decrease in education consider strategies. 1. Educational Pledge of Allegiance for a system good and positive mindset for students. 2. Personal values. Yes, a college can offer, but not promise a valuable life after graduation. Every student should have personal values that makes them strong. 3 Value education. Let faculty discuss and have students write down meaningful valuable points discussing their education and assisting students in obtaining. 4. Take a survey on what matters most. What will the survey teach you about what’s more important for the college in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term? What plans will you make according to the survey? 5. Time test. How big is this time issue? New York thrives in a fast-paced environment. Value time, test time with efforts, teamwork, plans, and work. Time allows for meeting, planning, changing, and upgrading. 6. Leveraging. This is obtainable. Leveraging allow for quality of education that holds the respective in place. If government, non-profit businesses, can do it then colleges can too. Many non-profit communities and government agencies allow for leveraging. Such as outside training, traveling to work or learning abroad (which Baruch has) while still holding fast to the laws or principals that hold each accountable and while developing a trust that depends on the goods and services that non-profit or agency delivers. Leveraging allows for experience to learn indoors and outdoors without compromising values. It may be the least expensive route. Alumni are part of that leveraging or teamwork, but professors or faculties are also, plus they are the graders, correctors, and points of contact for the structural and mobile student.
Ms. Younger, regarding the Educational Pledge of Allegiance and the need for Personal Values that is said to be the core mission of Academia, namely, the striving to attain the “summum bonum,” that is, the greatest good. Which is a restatement of MAAT the Ancient Egyptian principle of balance in the life of the individual, the State and Nature. It is a mistake for students to graduate and not to have heard of the principle of the “summum bonum.” As for leveraging, could you explain that a bit more?
A college can create some type of educational investment or operation strategy for a return increase, value increase over the devalue debt of education (if any). According to Investopedia, leverage refers to the use of debt (borrowed funds) to amplify returns from an investment or project. Investors use leverage to multiply their buying power in the market. Companies use leverage to finance their assets-instead of issuing stock to raise capital, companies can use debt to invest in business operations in an attempt to increase shareholder value.
Thank you for your posts and for sharing your own Baruch story. I appreciate what you said about your “love for Baruch’s high standards and my high standards” that “inspired me to be the best in my career.” And I like your ideas of the different forms of leveraging–including the experience, expertise and life stories of our alumni.
As President Wu says in his March 30 blog post, “Baruch is already on this path”—the path to technologically savvy, experiential, public, urban higher education. The important piece that’s still missing in this analysis of our ‘value proposition’ is that, when we look at ourselves in brute peer-to-peer competitive terms, we find that Baruch is, in fact, peerless. I say this without self-congratulation but, instead, with a combination of trepidation and (guarded) optimism.
We have a world-class public business school. Others have that too. We have a world-class MPA program and public affairs school. Others have that too. At WSAS (where I teach), we have benefitted from a veritable academic ‘buyer’s market’ over the last 10 years or so—recruiting many young genuinely high-performing and top-notch arts and sciences scholars who could, but for the vicissitudes of said market, have landed at Ivy League schools, top private colleges, or R1 or R2 research universities. This has been a boon to us, but it could very well have an expiration date if, in the medium term, we cannot accommodate—both academically and administratively—all that intellectual horsepower we were fortunate enough to have come our way. At any rate, others, too, have benefitted from the same market.
What others do *not* have—certainly not inside CUNY and very rarely outside of CUNY—is to combine all three under one roof: as different schools in *one* college (as opposed to, say, as different colleges in a larger university system). This structure is what makes Baruch College—and, consequently, the value of a Baruch College education unique.
The problem is that we are not, at present, leveraging (to use the term of art) our structural strength to its fullest.
The reason, I believe, is a combination of (i) a lack of institutional self-awareness (we don’t always seem to appreciate how unique we are) and (ii) institutional inertia (occasional glimmers of self-awareness—as, e.g., in our most recent college-wide strategic planning effort—are more readily forgotten than translated into purposeful, structured, sustained, and effective action).
There are many manifestations of this (in fact, too many to mention). Take, for example, reinventions of the wheel. I am thinking, specifically, of the many separate long-running and highly creative experiential learning initiatives that usually rest on the strength and stamina of individual faculty members but that are rarely coordinated and have no common intra-, let alone cross-school platform. Another manifestation are our curricular structures: of necessity school specific, those structures also lack (understandably, but not of similar necessity!) opportunities for cross-pollination and college-wide innovation. In the most general terms (and assuming hands can know things): too often the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, what that right hand is good at, or even that it belongs to the same body.
While the reasons for our current failure to make more effective use of the strengths we already have inhouse may be historical and many, the central reason, it seems to me, is a lack of panoptic vision. Other institutions of higher learning may be ‘unbundling.’ Baruch, I think, needs not only a ‘bundling’ but a genuine unification of our efforts. That’s why President Wu’s big-picture conversation is so exciting!
Hi, Thomas: Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I appreciate—and agree with—the sentiments you have expressed. And, trust me when I say it is among my top priorities as president to leverage our world-class strengths—in all three schools—to its fullest; and to utilize the City as our lab, our classroom, and our campus. I realize that this is easy said than done, but at the same time, it coincides with my own passion (and effort) over the past 20 years brining people from diverse disciplines to collaborate in research and teaching. You are absolutely right that proper coordination and facilitation is crucial so that different efforts can be amplified and leveraged, rather than working at cross proposes.
We have work to do; one program at a time, small success builds big success, and it is actually a lot fun to do.
Focus on “diversity” (whatever that means), and open admissions, as the surest vehicles for achieving institutional greatness!
So, what do ‘Diversity,’ ‘Equity,’ and ‘Inclusion’ mean in higher education? They are not empty buzzwords. *Pedagogically,* they represent the recognition of the dignity, worth, and native capacity of every learner, regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, creed, or identity. Facile categorizations have for too long kept–and continue to keep–members of societally under-represented groups from the social and personal good of higher education. *Institutionally,* they represent the recognition that providing and administering that social and personal good has similarly, for too long–and for reasons fully unrelated to the nature of that good–been the province of a relatively privileged few. Reducing arbitrary barriers of access to that social good, its delivery, and its administration and maintaining what makes it a good in the first place is the task Baruch is uniquely positioned to accomplish (see my earlier post). It’s the journey we are embarked on and what will, I hope, indeed prove to be a vehicle for institutional greatness, if it isn’t already.
Baruch is less uniquely positioned to accomplish this task than is the United States of America. Diversity, open admissions in universities compared with eliminating enforcement of the country’s borders is like a pimple on the _ _ _ of an elephant in attaining institutional greatness for the country and its universities. If “it’s” good for the university, it should be good for the country. The corporation! Diversity uber alles! Building up Baruch’s African-American Black Studies Dept. Will go a long way in helping to resolve seemingly intractable problems.
Yes, we can hardly achieve these things in isolation from, let alone against, larger societal and political currents. It’s a tense moment but I am hopeful for both the country and the college. And especially for the Black and Latino Studies Department at Baruch, which, I am fully confident will become the center of gravity of our efforts at the college and at Weissman School that it should have always been.
I started MBA studies at Baruch over 50 years ago and loved every minute. A degree in Computer Methodology opened significant opportunities for employment. But as years go by, technology inevitably evolves. As a PhD student, I found that research and experimentation with real-world populations leads to innovation. I am hoping all this education will help me make even a small contribution to improving somebody’s quality of life with educational technology.
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