Party Schools Exposed

Why higher education gets stuck with crooks like Harold Raveche

An editorial in today's New York Times notes that "disputes about financial management of college and universities have become increasingly commonplace," but it does not give a reason why this is happening.

Readers of this blog, however, understand that during the 1990s colleges changed their primary mission from education to making money, a disastrous decision that not only dumbed down college classes in the name of "retention" of customers but invited in a whole crop of CEO-wannabe administrators who understood that there was endless money to be made. No one was watching while they stuffed huge quantities of cash into their pockets.

In the case of Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, one of the new breed of administrators who looked a lot more like Gordon Gecko than John Dewey, began relentlessly stuffing his pockets. To make sure no one noticed he got rid of the more frugal members of the college board and replaced them with his friends, who knew when to look the other way while the coffers were looted.

As outlined in  this story in the Times, the New Jersey Attorney General has accused Harold Raveche, the president of the college,  with plundering the college's endowment fund. The college loaned him $1.8 million in illegal low interest loans, some of which were forgiven. For this bit of mischief the college reimbursed him with a $1.1 million salary.

Parents who want to know why their tuition is so high need look no farther. Who do you think pays for all of this? Why is it that colleges seem unable to control their costs and raise tuition at three times the inflation rate? Could it be that there are even more crooks lurking behind the ivy-covered walls? It used to be unthinkable that those nerdy college administrators with their tweed jackets and elbow patches were in it for the dough. But as crooks like Raveche are finally hauled into court the public will soon begin to question those high tuition payments and demand a thorough housecleaning. It's coming soon, folks.

Lazy American college students aren't interested in learning

A very interesting op-ed piece in the Boston Globe this week shows exactly what happens in party school college classrooms. Students are texting away under the desk, making excuses about why their work is never completed and sleeping through their classes. I have been there, folks and this is all true!

What makes Kara Miller's experience at Babson College different, however, is that she also has a number of students from other countries to compare with her U.S. slackers. Unlike most of her American students, these students from other countries actually pay attention in class. Imagine that! They work hard on their assignments. They show up on time for faculty office hours. In short, they CARE about learning. It's like turning back the clock a few decades.

While she blames her slacker students on modern American culture's fascination with time wasters like video games, I think the real reason is American public schools' wholehearted adoption of what's called the Self Esteem Movement. Elementary and secondary teachers, in fear of damaging students' self esteem, give every student high grades, praise everyone's work equally and give gold stars to every student in the room. A cartoon a few years back caught the problem with this exactly. It was an entire room of students all wearing T-shirts that said "I'm the best student in the class."

When you reward students who work hard with the same grades and the same praise as students who do nothing it encourages students to do as little work as possible. Add to this the high school culture that glorifies stupidity and treats smart and talented kids as outcasts and you get exactly what Miller's article describes: anti-intellectual students who sign up for a five-year cruise on the SS Party School barge.

It's a serious problem at hundreds of party schools across the country and it will only change when brave teachers like Miller blow the whistle and force American parents to see how little education they are getting for their inflated tuition money.

95 percent of college campus sexual assaults are not reported

A new report by the Center for Public Integrity called "Sexual Assault on Campus" has some pretty shocking statistics that every parent should read. While the official estimate is that one in five woman are the victims of rape or attempted rape before graduation, this new report shows that the numbers are much higher and that the majority of such crimes is simply covered up.

The reporters for the center talked with former students who were raped on college campuses and looked at how their cases were handled by secret campus judicial boards. They also talked with students at random who said they did not even bother to report sexual assaults because they felt they would simply be further victimized by the colleges.

Among the things the reporters found were that while dozens of rapes are reported to on-campus rape counseling centers every semester, none of these crimes makes it onto the college's official crime report listings, required by the federal government.  Why is that? Because colleges have a conflict of interest. For public relations reasons, colleges want to keep the official crime numbers low to give parents the false idea that the campuses are safe.  The need to constantly attract new customers conflicts with their duties to keep students informed about how common rapes are on campus.

The reporters found that colleges' secret judicial board hearings are notoriously reluctant to sentence their student rapists to any serious penalties. Why? Because the rapists are money-paying customers that they don't want to lose. Colleges know that if they get too tough on student misbehavior it will hurt them when it comes to enrollments.

So how lenient are these sentences for convicted rapists? Most states send rapists to prison for at least ten years, but college boards sentence them to writing essays, two-week expulsions, apologizing to the victims and attending education programs. Many victims are forced to sign secrecy agreements not to talk about the case and are not even informed about the sentences that their rapists received. The cloak of secrecy that colleges claim for themselves covers this all up.

It's fascinating reading about what really goes on behind the ivy-covered walls of America's campuses, which are among the most dangerous places in America in terms of crimes committed per acre. Rapists who get away with these slaps on the wrist simply encourage even more rapes and sexual abuses.  

No parents in their right minds would send their children to these dangerous campuses, but they continue to do so because colleges mislead them into believing college campuses are safe. As someone who worked at a party school campus for 12 years I can tell you that they are NOT safe.  Forget the numbers of the college's web site. Read this report before you make a decision you might regret.