Acceptance rate at proposed closing schools

One of the rationales DOE officials have cited for their proposed closings of twenty one schools is a low demand ratio of applications per seat.

Click on the chart to check out the acceptance rates for the schools slated for closure in the attached chart – with ratios of applications per seat comparable to some of the top US colleges and universities.

The Monroe Academy for Business and Law has an acceptance rate of 8% -- comparable to that of Harvard. Academy of Environmental Sciences has an acceptance rate of 9% -- comparable to Yale.

One of the schools lower on the list, Beach Channel’s Program in Law and Justice, has an acceptance rate of 56%, comparable to Polytechnic University, where David Chang, the chair of the Panel for Education Policy, is Chancellor.

The three zoned schools, Columbus, Beach Channel and Jamaica, that the DOE wants to phase out receive hundreds of applications a year from students in the neighborhood who are guaranteed to receive a seat.

In the case of Columbus, more than one thousand students applied. This means if these schools are phased out, their students will no longer have a zoned high school that they have a right to attend.

Quick Post: Community-Oriented Person Who Owes No Debt!

A few days ago I was speaking to a friend who is an attorney. He just so happens to be doing very well at the moment. Plus, he has no debt as result of his education. However, he recognizes that he went to school at a very different time. It was a time when school was affordable. This friend wholeheartedly believes that this student loan crisis needs to be solved. He understands the societal and financial repercussions if we do not attend to this serious problem.

That reminds me of another conversation I had a few months ago with a highly successful consultant. This consultant attended a top-notch school. I brought up the student loan crisis during our talk. He agreed that it was a problem. Then he told me that he belongs to the alumni group at said top-notch university. That group recently highlighted the rise in tuition at the university. He found that ridiculous. He said something along the lines of, "they are squeezing money out of the wrong people [the middle class]."

Then he laughed and said, "I will be giving away my age, but when I went to [top-notch university] the cost was so reasonable that I could work during the summers at a camp and afford to pay for the whole school year."

Wow - that speaks volumes. In response to the NYT article about the city of Albany passing the resolution to forgive student loan debt, a commenter was against the proposal. They made a good point: the cost of tuition needs to be addressed instead. I agree, but that is just one other piece of this complex puzzle.

I also wanted to highlight a great remark from another post there. They wrote:

"My parents paid for my years at an Ivy League college where I earned a nice Degree. From there I was able to pick a job that I enjoyed and that fit my skills - all unencumbered by debt. What a nice way to head out into the World on my own!

While I was lucky, I do very much wish everyone had that same chance.

— jpgaskell"

Like my attorney pal, who's doing very well, this person obviously understands the reasons for why this movement has grown and why the proposal makes sense.

I applaud these types of people - the ones who understand why this matters to all of us (debt free or otherwise). They are clearly community-oriented, and that's something that invokes patriotic feelings. It reminds me of the first time I really experienced a 4th of July and felt inspired by its historical significance. It was in Boston. My favorite people in the world were there - my family - and we got to stand atop a rooftop of a beautiful old apartment on Commonwealth Avenue. I've never seen fireworks that big. As those fireworks fell past us, I thought about my family's love and support. For it was on that day my family had helped me with things related to my own Ivy League Education. I was heading to Harvard in the Fall to be an exchange scholar. I was filled with so much hope and awe. When I read things like this above, those feelings return, and it makes me feel hopeful about our future generations and their right to obtain college degrees without paying a dreadful cost: the dashing of those dreams behind obtaining an education.

Why Wall Street Greed is connected to education matters

Here's a concern for me: what's education worth? Why does it matter? Who cares about funding education and why? Education obviously has pragmatic purposes (learning the basics like spelling, arithmetic, etc.). That goes for earning a 4-year degree, too. Pragmatism isn't necessarily bad when it comes to education policy.

But Wall Street has cast a dark shadow over education in this country. In many ways, it seems that the aim of education has become tied up with only making money. The desire to make money isn't necessarily bad. But what happens to a culture when the financial industry rules above all else?

Before the financial crisis many students who started at the Ivies had one thing in mind - making it to Wall Street and making it big. Everyone wanted to be in finance. I have a hunch that that certainly wasn't out of a true passion to work 80 hours a week in stocks and bonds. Obviously that drive has changed - that's a good thing. Young adults are rethinking their options and looking into other industries. When it comes to the way education matters, it's painful to learn that Wall Street rewarded those who were not entrepreneurial and were not interested in growing companies for the right reasons (to create solid products, develop strong relationships). Instead, they were driven by greed. Some may accuse me of simplifying the aims. Granted, it's a complicated story, and even good writers like Michael Lewis have a hard time untangling the details . But from this angle, it seems clear as day. There is validity in those who can analyze from the outside - that's an example of why education matters and why the financial industry ought to be regulated to some degree.

There's another problematic piece to this whole story of greed and economics. Obama has a mission to improve things, especially education. As I already said, that's admirable. But take a look at those who are closest to him, Larry Summers. It seems Summers has a questionable history when it comes to finance - take Harvard as an example. The school last year had a $36.9 billion endowment (yes, that's correct. I didn't make an error in the numerical evidence). Keep in mind, in 1990 its endowment was at a healthy $4.8 billion. The financial crisis hit its guilded halls and in the first four months of the fiscal year of 2008, Harvard lost a staggering $8 billion. To those who are aware of the endowment numbers for other Ivies, that loss is mundane and shocking. For example Columbia's endowment is around $7 billion, and Brown - my alma mater as a Ph.D. student - in Ivy-circles is known for being the poorest Ivy of them all. Its coffers are at roughly $2 billion. (Brown struggles to keep their graduate programs afloat and sadly many people who have gone there have paid the price, and I don't mean in terms of dollars. That story is to come later).


On top of that, when Summers left the school , the man made millions speaking to companies that later collapsed or needed bailout money from the government. The name Harvard is so powerful in academic and financial circles that any other reputable school's value shrinks by comparison (I'm not suggesting that that is valid or necessarily true). But will Harvard's emblematic prowess disappear with the age of excessive deregulation that defined the post 9/11 world? There are murmurings in the lovely, ueber-intellectual streets of Cambridge, nervous chatter can be heard around Harvard Square and in popular watering holes like Grendel's Den, that Summers drove the university into the ground. He did so by making poor and risky investment decisions, or so many people suggest. One thing is certain, and as VF's article illustrates, Harvard is facing some hard times.

But the U.S. is facing even harder times, and perhaps this economic downturn will result in new analysis and positive change for educational institutions. This moment could also us enable us become better guardians and attend to our educational priorities. It just might allow us to get back to the basics, and that would mean re-emphasiing good, well-rounded education, over a putatively utiltarian approach that equals just getting some degree you can "use" in order to make, for example, oodles of money on Wall Street. All the while your personal life remains distant from your existenial experiences or even worse it is just a continual storm of chaos. After al, if those who earned practical degress (MBAs, business degrees, finance, etc) can't get jobs to pay of their student loans, maybe the sciences - soft and hard - as well as the liberal arts and humanities will benefit.

Crises don't have to lead to future crises. If we seize this moment, reasseess our values about money and finance and Wall Street, and have people educated in stronger, better ways, this society could very well flourish.

Got into Harvard, Rejected by JPA

Lee Jia Hui got into Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth and Cornell but got rejected by JPA and Bank Negara. He explains his rejections (for the scholarships) by his vocal nature. I'm not surprised that he was rejected. I can imagine the eyes of the interviewers bulging as he was discussing his interest in politics, sexuality and self-identity. But I'm glad that he was full funding from Harvard. Goes to show that if you're smart, if you want to do something out of the box and if you are willing to work hard at the application process, you can find funding sources to study overseas, especially in a place like the US. Maybe not everyone can get into Harvard but there are plenty of liberal arts colleges with generous funding opportunities.