Be True to Your School

My undergraduate university and my graduate school both hit me up for money this week.  Would I please donate, as I do most years, to their annual funds?

I thought twice about giving to both schools this year.  I’m feeling a little poor.  One of the schools, I’m not sure they really need the money.  And I have some concerns about what both schools are doing these days; by withholding my measly $100 might they sit up and take notice? And go back to being the kind of school I attended 30-40 years ago?

When I had that thought I realized I was coming close to being the old-fart kind of alum I’ve always mocked, the oldster who gripes about what the dear school used to be like, back in the day… 

No, I wrote the checks.  But it got me to thinking about American higher education.

We’ve always bragged in America about our great education system, universal free public school, quality state colleges and universities, leading research institutions, Jefferson’s ideal of the educated populace.  Until, that is, we could no longer deny our pathetic test schools compared to other countries, our increasingly wide gap between rich and entitled students and poor struggling ones, our unfairly low teacher salaries and our dwindling government support and investment in education. Republicans want to eliminate the federal Department of Education, to provide vouchers for religious schools, to let parents chose for their kids to learn voodoo subjects like creationism.

Stanford University At the same time, more and more Americans are going to college and graduate school.  The education industrial complex is booming, schools have fancier buildings and labs.  But are folks getting an education fit for this new century and this new global workforce and culture?  Are teachers being trained and supported and paid a living wage?  Tuition prices are outrageous and student debt is devastating.  It’s like health care; the costs keep going up and up, but the clients and service providers don’t seem to be benefiting any more than before. 

I was a New Jersey girl in 1969 when I came west to attend Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.  I stayed to complete two masters degrees at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. 

I got a good liberal arts education at both schools and supported myself as a minister for 30 years.  I appreciated the good faculty, the supportive communities and the progressive California approaches to education at both places.  But now my college is cutting back on its humanities programs in favor of its lucrative science, computer and business schools. My graduate religion school is struggling mightily to figure out who can best lead the rapidly changing church and how to equip them.  The students and curriculum are radically changed from my day.  I barely recognize the schools I attended.

A short history of these two interesting old (for California) schools: 

Both Stanford and PSR were founded by easterners, like me, who came west to seek fame and fortune.  Leland Stanford was Midwest businessman, who invested in railroads, made a fortune from the transcontinental railroad and went on to serve as California Governor and Senator. When his only son died at age 15 of typhoid fever, he and his wife Jane decided to honor him by establishing a university; “California’s children will be our children.”  Established in 1891 and scoffed by East Coast traditionalists, Stanford is now a powerhouse of research, computer tech, law, business and medicine.

Pacific School of ReligionPacific School of Religion (PSR) was founded 25 years earlier, in 1866, just 15 years after the Gold Rush brought tens of thousands of fortune seekers west.  In much the same way that the first New England settlers founded Harvard in 1636 as a seminary to train ministers for New World churches, so 1860’s new California businessmen and civic leaders wanted ministers who could speak to the forward thinking entrepreneurs and rough adventurers of the west.  First these men founded PSR as the first seminary west of the Mississippi, progressively admitting women and Japanese Americans in its first classes and then the same folks went on to found the University of California. 

In architecture, PSR looks like an east coast school, even pseudo Gothic.  Stanford’s campus is distinctly Californian, the mission style, with red tile terra cotta roofs and a Silicon Valley style sprawl. (Makes sense since Stanford grads Bill Hewlett and David Packard founded Silicon Valley.) 

Stanford has lots of money, thanks to alumni like Hewlett and Packard, income from faculty inventions like the transistor, and lots of government funded research.  Last year they were the first American university to raise a billion dollars in one year, and their endowment is $17 billion.  When my father came to visit me, he paused on the edge of campus, sniffed the air, and like the Wall Street executive that he was said, “I smell money.”  It’s only gotten much richer in the last 40 years.

Pacific School of Religion has never been rich, and church folks have never been accused of being great business people, especially nice mainline Protestants.  PSR has an endowment too, but has struggled with old buildings and the challenges especially today that face ministry and the church.  They’ve always taken seriously the gospel call for justice and inclusiveness but prophetic ministry doesn’t make a lot of money for grads to donate to their school.

So it sounds like PSR needs my money more than Stanford does.

Why give money to schools?  Or to any charities for that matter?   We give out of loyalty, appreciation, good memories.  People donated in the past so I could get a scholarship or make up the costs my tuition didn’t cover; I’ll pay it forward.  Maybe we give as an investment – will I get better football tickets if I give more? (In Stanford’s case, yes.  PSR doesn’t have a football team.)  Will it improve the odds my kid will be accepted?  They say no, but I am dubious.  We also give because we get a tax break in the US for charitable giving.  That’s another thing the Republicans want to eliminate – let market forces support such good work.  We give (please note, fundraisers) because we are asked.  Stanford is very good at asking.  I have a great conversation with an earnest young pre-med student who listened to my concerns about the humanities programs. 

But is higher education still viable and still necessary?  I wonder sometimes.

The increased cost of a college education (Stanford’s tuition this year is $41,000. I paid $2,850 in 1973) not only makes it impossible for many to go to college.  It also means most grads have incredible debt that takes a lifetime to pay off.  Barack and Michelle Obama only paid off their college loans 8 years ago.  Almost 20% of college grads have over $50,000 in debt. 

And there are more good jobs to be had without a college degree, especially in the computer and tech fields.  And without that debt. 

I usually designate my gifts to go to scholarships. Both of my schools offer lots of scholarships and work hard to admit folks from all classes and ethnic backgrounds, much more than when I was a student; I applaud that.

So I wrote my checks.  But it doesn’t stop me wondering if the kind of inexpensive liberal arts education I got will ever return.  What will be the schools of tomorrow?

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter