Big money

Columbia University received an immense donation of $400 million from John Kluge, half of which is to be allocated to financial aid for students enrolled in Columbia College. Yesterday, I attended the meeting (rather, press conference) at which the announcement was made. This is great news for the President, as was evidenced by his genuine optimism, since it almost guarantees the success of Manhattanville, and thus, his legacy.

Yet somehow, I am finding it difficult to muster up the requisite amount of excitement about this news. Obviously, it's nice that some future students will get enough financial aide to study at the College. By all means. In fact, this is much better use of a philanthropic donation than the typical building renovation or a chair in the Literature department. But, if I had $400 million in free money, I would look to remedy other, more pressing educational issues than the financial difficulty of paying $140,000 for four years of liberal arts at an Ivy.

A side note - Mayor Bloomberg was also present at the announcement, and made a short, somewhat pointless speech. He mentioned how well his improvement plans for the NYC public schools are materializing. Unfortunately, nobody from TC was present to challenge him. Still, our differences on education reform aside, (transit strike? what transit strike?) Bloomberg is definitely my favorite politician. For one, he is an engineer (B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins), and obviously very clever. Also, he is short, in a charming sort of way. And that's pretty much all it takes.