<p>“Cornell University, the economic crisiss latest victim in higher education, will freeze hiring, pause construction and review its budget, Cornell said Thursday.” Any news from other Ivies about cutbacks?</p>
<p>I think Cornell would be affected more because of the statutory colleges and their state funding; SUNY is absorbing $200 million of NYS budget cuts. so, rather than looking around the Ivy league, perhaps watching for similar actions elsewhere in NYS, like at perhaps Binghamton, Geneseo, UB, etc. would make more sense. (I think…I haven’t been following his incredibly closely…)</p>
<p>The analogous letter from Penn’s Amy Gutmann. In a nutshell “Dear Penn Community: we’re not cutting back on anything as long as you don’t do anything stupid.”</p>
<p>If the poor Ivies are barely affected, then the ludicrously rich Ivies certainly won’t be.</p>
<p>I don’t even think the budget cuts have anything to dow ith the students needs, I t hink it has more to do with the employees that are working there.</p>
<p>I think Hopkins is in the same boat as Cornell, though the email from President Brody sounds more optimistic. </p>
<p>“The good news is that – at least in the near term – the university’s financial position is strong. We beat our bottom-line budget goals for the fiscal year that ended June 30. Only a very tiny fraction of the university’s investments were with institutions that have failed or been taken over in recent well-publicized government actions.”</p>
<p>But at the same time, </p>
<p>“The outlook is sobering. I have asked the deans and directors and the officers of the university to take a hard look at their budgets for fiscal 2009 and succeeding years. I have asked them to think seriously about what adjustments might be necessary.”</p>
<p>Well, it’s not particularly surprising… My own school has gotten hit really hard by the budget cuts and certainly, construction projects are always the first to go. They’ve been abandoning all kinds of plans and raising fees like crazy this year.</p>
<p>My son got a notice from the CS department with some minor stuff. They have three computer labs in a building and will be changing the hours on the lab to normal business hours (9-5). The others will be open 7x24 but the computers will automatically shut down at midnight. Students that want to use them will have to power them up.</p>
<p>My son has a MacBook Pro so that he can do his Unix assignments without any university resouces.</p>
<p>The strength of any college is its ability to offer financial aid to attract top tier studetns. That being said, many school’s endowment has been impacted by the stock market. I don’t think a school is ever need blind, but more need aware. I wonder if Cornell would admit more out of state students for land grant schools and more students not applying for FA.</p>
<p>I wonder on an different plane: if NY reducess $$ for land grant colleges, but Cornell wants to share the pain across all colleges, will its private colleges be seen as less attractive to out-of-staters vis a vis other private colleges? I mean someone paying full freight might think long and hard about whether computer labs will be open (just as an exampele) bcos the state of NY needs to cut its public education budgetr.</p>
<p>I think Cornell will spread its pain across all colleges. Cornell has always been run as one cohesive university, not as separate colleges (good or bad). Cornell will probably do better than other smaller LACs during this economic down turn because of its endownment and size (if you close a few libraries early, there’ll still be other libraries). I see top tier schools will attract more wealthy and lower income students, and the campus being more polarized. Cornell has very good international reputation. It could replace many in state students with full fare OSS and internationals if allowed by NY (not sure how it works, X $ funding needs Y number of in state students?)</p>
<p>There is an article in today’s N.Y. Times about this. A rep from Tufts said they think they will no longer be able to be need blind and a Dickinson spokesperson said that an applicant’s financial status would unfortunately have to be taken into account more than previously.</p>