Tough oil is with us.
There is no way back
to the time of plenty
Catherine Czerkawska
The problem with euthanasia
Works of art are not good
for anything. They are
an end in themselves
Rear Window
Springburn diary
Angus Skinner
What a jolly good idea – having no government. The only obstacle, say the Belgians (who seem set to not have one till 2014) is fear of absurdity. We should fear normality more.
There is a danger of course that the civil service would simply run the country, which I suspect is happening In Belgium. But then again that is a danger we have tolerated probably since before the 1920s.
How liberating might it be to suspend the need for government? Politicians would fret, wring their hands and lobby each other, form cabals for the return of government, any government. Would the rest of us? Would there be more or less likelihood of dancing in the streets?
And what might that lead to? Creative discourse? Understanding? A nation meeting itself. Meeting its future.
But we will have government – of whatever complexion. Hanging on to nurse for fear of something worse. And I look around Scotland and I think, we are not ready not to have government, too scary. A salutary thought.
Islay’s daily pic
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Today’s banner
The shore at Berneray
by Islay McLeod
Could Scotland
have its own
Ivy League?
Andrew Hook
The Ivy League universities as private institutions receive no direct federal or state funding. Hence their annual tuition fees make even £9,000 a year sound like a bargain.
Then again the Ivy League universities can rely on a contemporary source of income that just doesn’t exist in Scotland or England: the extraordinary generosity of their alumni. The sheer scale of their alumni giving is difficult for us to grasp. In 2007 Princeton launched a five-year programme to raise $1.75 billion. By March 10 this year – despite the economic downturn – $1.47 billion had already been raised from alumni and friends: 58,624 of them. And this campaign exists alongside, and in addition to, the permanent ‘annual giving’ system through which millions of dollars are raised for the university every year.
How is it done? Well, again in part because the tradition of alumni giving in the Ivy League is an established, historical fact of life. The tradition goes back at least as far as the late decades of the 19th century – that is when alumni associations began to be created in every American city or region. Then one other factor, peculiar to the entire American college and university system, makes it easier to make alumni giving a permanent reality: the system of student class identity.
All American students beginning their studies this autumn will be identified at the institution they are entering as the ‘Class of 2015’. And they will always retain that class identity. Alumni associations use that identity to facilitate fund-raising: classes compete with each other over the amount they contribute. In the Ivy League – and probably in most of America’s private colleges and universities – the majority of graduates will participate in annual giving. Year after year.
This is not a league in which Scottish graduates compete – and it’s difficult to imagine them ever doing so. (The British Treasury could help them to make a start, though, by making all financial gifts to educational institutions fully tax-allowable.)
Finally there is the issue of student admissions. The Ivy League universities as private institutions receive no direct federal or state funding. Hence their annual tuition fees make even £9,000 a year sound like a bargain. Around $50,000 per year is the going rate. So they are the exclusive preserve of the richest families in America? In fact they are not. (Think Michelle Obama at Princeton, her husband at Harvard).
Most operate a ‘needs blind’ admissions policy. What this means is that funding is available to make it possible for any student from whatever financial background to accept an offered place. Hence the student body at an Ivy League school reflects the diversity of American society at large. Princeton received 27,115 applications to enter the Class of 2015: 74% of that number sought financial aid. (Of the 2,282 offered admission 22% are Asian-American, 9.8 % are Hispanic or Latino, 9.1% are African-American, 5% are multi-racial, less than 1% Native American. And the university expects that 60% of the incoming class will receive financial aid.)
Obviously the ‘needs blind’ admissions policy does work; but only because the institution has the resources to pay for it. A Scottish Ivy League, however, inevitably lacking such resources, would undoubtedly become an upper-class preserve. Surely not an outcome that Lord Sutherland would favour.
Andrew Hook is a former professor of English literature at
Glasgow University
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