The problem is that Sorkin made this claim today:

"Name a successful unionized company. Think. You're going to go to [commercial] break before you come up with one. And that's the problem."

Which immediately suggests that he is not an alumnus of the ILR School. Because had he been one, he would have known that there are scores of profitable unionized Fortune 500 companies out there.

Of course, Sorkin is actually a graduate of the Ag school. Shouldn't he be growing a pest-resistant strain of alfalfa somewhere?

P.S. Yeah, I know -- posting has been sparse. That should change.

Late Update: Sorkin writes in to inform us of the fact that he at least dated an ILRie while on East Hill.

As you leave Cornell and move to the next stage, I urge you not to dwell too much on the uncertainties of your own future, but, instead, to realize that the world stands in desperate need of your skills and talents. You have graduated from one of the world's best research universities. You are smart, knowledgeable, creative. During your time on campus, you've impressed us with your intelligence and also with your energy, your sense of purpose, your commitment to service. The world needs what you have to offer now more than ever.

One of our graduating seniors in civil and environmental engineering, Zaheer Tajani, reminded me that there is an inscription on the Eddy Street gate that served as the original entrance to the campus. You've probably walked past it a thousand times on trips from campus to Collegetown. It reads:

So enter
that daily thou mayest become
more learned and thoughtful.

So depart
that daily thou mayest become
more useful to thy country and
to mankind.

I urge you to be creative and forceful in bringing your skills to bear on the problems we face, including the current economic dilemma, "to be more useful" to your country and to humankind. We need your creativity, your courage, your optimism, your clarity of purpose. We need you to volunteer in your communities, to serve on school boards, to participate in the political process. We need you to contribute to non—profit organizations. Most of all, we need you to put those hard—won skills and habits of mind to use not only in your professional lives, but in service to your community and to the world.

Your accomplishments to date have not been trivial, but you will go on to accomplish so much more.

Let's start by winning our first NCAA national championship in 31 years tomorrow.

Godspeed. And Let's Go Red!

Dave, of course, is known for his wildly outlandish costumes that never cease to entertain and amuse thousands of Lynah spectators every year, while also producing one of the smoothest ice sheets that college hockey has to offer:

Back in my day, Dave was also known to haunt The Chariot along with the boys in the Glee Club every Wednesday night. I wouldn't be surprised if he is a fixture among campus for a long time to come.

Parros does seem to fit more of the Ivy League stereotype:

If such sweat equity belies their Ivy League pedigree, there is no such incongruity off the ice.

Parros earned his degree in economics with a paper that examined the implications of the 2002 West Coast longshoreman strike on the national economy, and he can converse in Greek and Spanish. More importantly, he routinely trounces teammates Rob Niedermayer, Drew Miller, Ryan Carter and Ryan on the USA Today crossword puzzle.

"They're always asking George if their answers are right," said teammate Andrew Ebbett. "Most of them can't do the crossword -- they're more puzzle guys."

Murray earned his bachelor's in hotel administration, a program for which Cornell is renowned. He has put his education -- in and out of the classroom -- to use when he and a pair of classmates invented and marketed a beer-keg tap that fills three glasses at once. Murray has left the business mostly to his partners, while he focuses on hockey.

"I love hockey," Murray said. "But I couldn't have a better insurance policy."

About a month ago, over 1,000 people first started signing a petition lobbying for the return of Nutritional Sciences 200: Vegetarian Nutrition, a former course taught by Prof. T. Colin Campbell, one of the world’s leading researchers in the field. The petition claims that Cornell’s abrupt removal of the course and refusal to disclose an explanation was “clearly a violation of academic freedom.”

The course was pulled back in 2005, and Campbell has spent the last few years attempting to settle the matter internally with the University.

“The course was terminated with no consultation with me … and without allowing me to seek the opinion of the curriculum committee who originally approved it on behalf of the faculty,” Campbell explained. “I did everything possible to resolve this from the inside.”

Still, he received no information. However, he does have some ideas as to the reasons behind the abrupt decision.

“The person who did this was a major consultant to the dairy industry … and the direction of my research for the past four decades has many unfavorable implications for a number of industries.”

The “person” Campbell is referring to is Cutberto Garza, the director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences when the course was canceled but has since moved to Boston College as academic vice president. According to Alan Mathios, dean of the College of Human Ecology, course catalogue decisions ultimately lay in the hands of department directors — in this case, Garza. Garza has been a consultant for a number of companies, including the Dannon Institute, one of the world’s most prominent dairy lobbying groups.

Although Garza could not be reached for comments, the current Division of Nutritional Sciences Director Patrick Stover said, “The decision to no longer offer the course was made for educational reasons and has absolutely nothing to do with the division’s alleged ties to the dairy industry.”

Full disclosure: I consume dairy and meat products, although I mostly enjoy meat from the farmer who lives in my town.

Longtime readers of this website will not find the topic -- the possible reorganization of the undergraduate colleges to both improve the academic experience and streamline the budget-- a new one. It's something that I have been hinting at and nibbling around the edges with for awhile, especially as the TAM consolidation has foreshadowed future academic changes on campus.

Space was a concern, though. And for every idea that made it into the article, two more ended up on the editing block, and I could have really used some more examples to demonstrate my point. I'll be following up over the weekend with some more thoughts. But until then, I would love to read any feedback, either via my own email or the Sun's website.

In the face of the current economic downturn and New York’s fiscal woes, President Skorton recently asserted the need to “reconfigure” our beloved Cornell. The time is opportune to rethink how departments and colleges are positioned across East Hill. By doing so, we can not only streamline the University’s budget and cut through the Big Red Tape, but also improve the undergraduate experience and strengthen Cornell’s role as a land-grant institution.

Nowhere is this need greater than in the applied social sciences. Today, applied programs featuring faculty in the fields of economics, psychology, government, business and sociology are found in all three of the undergraduate contract colleges in an inefficient mix of departments and students.

While good historical reasons exist for the current arrangement, the simple truth is that many of Cornell’s departmental and college-level distinctions puzzle prospective students, faculty recruits and outside observers alike. Not only do they dilute the academic experience for many Cornellians, but they can also foster unhealthy budgetary and programmatic competition between the colleges.

The rest is on the Sun's website.

The kicker is that the University (rightly) decided to limit funding for Slope Day this year, but the SA chose to redirect money originally earmarked to an endowment for student activities in order to save ‘Slope Day’. And President Skorton actually penned a letter saying that he “appreciated” the SA’s effort to “meet the needs of students”, although I think it is fair to say that he probably said it through clenched teeth.

Both a reader of Dear Uncle Ezra and the old man himself are not amused:

Dear Uncle Ezra, I know that the university faces an adverse economic climate where it has to make difficult choices with the budget. However, it seems completely unjustifiable to me to eliminate a library (Physical Sciences) that serves the physicists and chemists, while funding Slope Day, a non-academic pursuit. No one will lose a job if we skipped Slope Day for a year, but jobs are being eliminated with the library. What is the university's rationale in keeping Slope Day going?

Dear Student,
I totally agree with you and I am not happy at all that a huge amount of money is going to an event focused on watching scantily dressed young women gyrate on stage. But this is what the students wanted and much of the money is coming from the Student Activity Fee, which is the students' money to spend…

There were many options including low budget, highly talented local artists for Slope Day, but the committee thought a "big name" was important. I hope that in retrospect everyone will see that we are all in this financial crisis together and that sometimes we need to work together to change our priorities to fit with the times.

I would add that another option would have been doing away with the need for a musical act altogether and returning Slope Day to its roots: hauling a couple of couches and kegs to hang out on Libe Slope. Like the way it was done my freshman year. But somehow I don’t think that the University’s lawyers would agree.

Consider this: Between the regular S.A. charge and this year’s additional payment-in-lieu-of-endowment, Slope Day is funded to the tune of $20 per student -- or over a quarter of a million dollars.

Now, all of this comes in light of the fact that the University has announced plans to disband its programs in Swedish and Dutch languages beginning in the fall of 2010. Consolidation of Mechanics into Mechanical Engineering or streamlining libraries for under-utilized services is one thing, but the full-scale dismantlement of viable academic programs falls into another category altogether.

Especially when a program has exactly one person on staff.

I’m obviously not privy to the finances of these particular programs, but with only one lecturer each, shared administrative functions with larger departments, and not a whole lot of demand for office or classroom space on campus, I can’t see the combined cost of these programs costing more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, if not a bit less.

Which is about the cost of Slope Day.

Moreover, it appears that the Swedish program, in particular, has brought considerable reputational and funding benefits to the University. A recent alumna of the program, KD, writes:

I think the Swedish program offers a lot to the University. It brings in grad students, it interfaces well with linguistics, it acts as a cheap way for Cornell to acclimate the 40-65 Swedes arriving to study on campus annually, and it opens up all sorts of grants to students. The Swedish government is just dying for people to learn its language, and offers travel and research grants for which Cornell puts up by far the most competition.

For instance, we attract a lot of attention with that program from Sweden's Agriculture University and Uppsala University. The University gets a lot of exchange students that the professor organizes and acclimates to live in Ithaca. Since we have two official two-way exchange programs with two different Swedish universities, cutting the one professor that comprises the whole department may be more than made up for in administrative costs to the University in managing those exchange students.

In the political calculus of University budgets, a day of drunken debauchery is prized over a program that provides meaningful engagement with our international peers.

Gillibrand said she sees a lack of American students studying life sciences in college and noted that other occupations, such as nursing and engineering, have also been affected by shortages.

She has proposed a bill that would provide federally funded tuition for juniors and seniors majoring in science, math and technology. The senator will also encourage Gov. David Paterson to enact loan forgiveness for medical students who choose to practice primary care, as opposed to a more lucrative specialty.

Her proposal is exciting because it recognizes the fact that there are significant public benefits to educating students in the sciences, and that the current costs to such a degree may be restricting the pool of interested students. Who could pass up a half-price degree from CALS or Engineering?

Where I am worried, though, is that there is no mechanism to require that students actually pursue a career in the sciences. There has been an increasing tendency for students educated in the sciences to find themselves lured by the financial excesses of Wall Street. Nate Silver has blogged about this worrisome phenomenon, and I'm convinced that absent a rebuilding of the regulatory framework that has been dismantled so handily over the last thirty years, the underlying incentives to enter certain careers will not change.

What's striking is how we have reinvented so much of our economy over the last thirty years to replace work of actual productive value (e.g. producing machines, improving the health of children, and perfecting agricultural techniques) with work where the value is nebulous, on paper, and fleeting, at best (e.g. underwriting CDOs and coming up with financial arbitrage techniques in what is essentially a zero-sum game). Even more striking is how the barons of Wall Street justify their salaries by claiming to have actually added value to the nation's economy, when all they have done is joined a particularly well-connected club with a monopolistic stranglehold over the American economy.

So perhaps Gillibrand should first focus on keeping her downstate constituents in line.

Below, I've compiled a quick ranking of Goldwater Scholarships by school in 2009 for select schools:

'Tis a shame we couldn't have settled the score of the Bemidji State hockey game with Goldwater Scholarships on Sunday.

Genius! By moving from the Ivy League to the Big 10/11, Cornell would improve their academic standing from the eighth-best in the conference to second-, third-, or fourth-best in the conference. But what about being competitive in athletics?

But seriously, now, I think everybody is missing my point.

It's not that Cornell would necessarily be better served in the Big 10. It won't. And it's not that Cornell's football or basketball teams could actually hope to play to the level of Michigan State or Wisconsin. They can't.

It's just that a certain subset of Cornellians happen to think that the school's Ivy League status actually means something to their personal sense of worth, when it doesn't. And pointing out that our school has a lot of similarities with a different athletic conference would merely help Cornell to better stand on its own merits, just like Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown, or Rice.

Besides, I like Cornell's all-time winning record against Michigan football. And I think it might make sense to keep it that way.

With the selection process now complete for the Class of 2013, the University has announced an admit rate of 19.1 percent for early and regular decision. This represents a 1.3 percent decrease since last year, bringing the admit rate below 20 percent for the first time in the history of Cornell.

The University received 34,381 applications, the largest amount ever, and a 4 percent increase over last year. The admissions office received 33,073 applicants for the Class of 2012, 30,382 for the Class of 2011 and 28,097 for the Class of 2010.

For this admissions cycle, 3,311 students were waitlisted, while 22,434 were outright denied admission.

Couple of quick thoughts:

-- Per our annual tradition, we estimated an acceptance rate of 18.6 percent earlier this year. So only off by half a percentage point isn't too shabby. Of course, I would contend that I we would have been closer to the mark had the University decided to not increase the entering class size by 100 students.

-- The total application count increased somewhat to 34,381 from the 34,200 previously reported. I suspect some of that increase may be attributed to recruited athletes and 'development' VIP admits.

-- The regular decision acceptance rate stands at 17.2 percent versus the 37 percent acceptance rate for early decision candidates.

-- Just as occurred last year, there is a gap between the total number of applications, on one hand, and the total number of accepted, waitlisted, and rejected students on the other. If the same lesson from last year holds, we can assume that 2,069 students applied to Cornell but did not select a college to which to be considered for admission.

-- The implied regular decision yield for the Class of 2013 is 36 percent, for an overall expected yield of 48 percent. Frankly, the 36 percent yield figure strikes me as a bit optimistic, even if it reflects the yield enjoyed last year. Why? First, because I don't think that schools like Harvard and Princeton will want to depend as heavily on the waitlist as they did last year, meaning that there will be more cross-admit battles that Cornell will have to deal with. Secondly, because I think the current economic climate will leave a lot of families thinking long and hard about the benefits of a Cornell education vis-a-vis their in-state flagship.

-- I wonder if the University is secretly hoping to over-enroll again this year, as well. Last summer, Cornell over-enrolled by 130 students, with an entering class size of 3.180 relative to a target of 3,050. This year, with a target of 3,150 students, it would be awfully convenient for the University's budget to enroll 3,250 students.

-- As we all know, acceptance rates tell you nothing about the strength of the student body, nor the quality of the undergraduate experience.

We learn that Cornell was able to raise $250 MM in five year notes at 4.35% and $250 MM in ten year notes at 5.45%. We also learn that the University is set to raise another $305 MM in non-taxable debt through the State Dormitory Authority this week, in a long-planned offering designed to provide further working capital for the University's ongoing construction projects.

The good news is that when compared to Harvard's bond issue in late December, Cornell will enjoy a lower interest rate 'spread' relative to Ten Year Treasuries. In fact, the premium that Cornell ends up paying for its debt -- 270 basis points -- is much more in line with Princeton's (at 264 basis points) than Harvard's (with a 345 basis point spread over Treasuries). Keep in mind that while both Princeton and Harvard are rated Aaa by Moody's (the highest grade possible), Cornell is one notch below at Aa1.

Of course, even though Cornell may be enjoying cheaper rates than Harvard, this doesn't mean that Cornell is seen as less of a credit risk than our counterparts in Cambridge. For one, Harvard raised their debt in December, when credit markets were decidedly a bit more jittery. And two, Cornell only raised one-third as much debt as Harvard did. As I suggested a couple of weeks ago, all things equal, Cornell will enjoy lower rates due to the smaller size of its debt issue. This fact is reflected in Vanderbilt's issue of $250 MM (only 50 percent of that of Cornell) last month -- where slightly better rates were enjoyed despite Vanderbilt's marginally worse Aa2 rating.

Still, one can't help but marvel at the amount of indebtedness the University has taken upon itself in the past month -- its debt load will basically double overnight, from $800 MM to over $1600 MM. And an important measure of fiscal health -- the ratio of expandable resources to debt (e.g. 'coverage') will be halved. This comes after more than 12 years of stable debt and asset levels, and is why Standard & Poor's downgraded the University's credit rating.

For more information on the history of Cornell's debt financing, I would recommend perusing the latest financial report of the University.

While the irony of the University needing to raise more debt in a time when debt has been broadly chastised as a source of the world's economic woes is not lost on us, I do feel that these actions reflect the necessary financial stewardship by Day Hall.

After all, institutions of higher education can afford to take a long-term view of their finances, and the time is ripe to continue to make investments in basic research and education. The opportunity cost of not continuing to invest in an institution as successful as Cornell is greater than ever.

Now. How does one pronounce Bemidji?

In his open forum with staff regarding ongoing budget challenges, Skorton really hits this point home:

When asked how the economy is affecting the university's relationship with the State University of New York (SUNY) system, Skorton said that state cuts, Cornell's fiscal adjustments and SUNY's budget issues make for a difficult situation, but "regardless of funding I will not walk away from our relationship with the state, because we're not the state's land-grant university only if we receive $170 million. We're the land-grant university -- period."

And the same sentiment is reiterated in a press release touting Cornell as an economic engine for the State:

"As one of the state's leading entrepreneurial universities with a $2.8 billion budget, Cornell is a critical resource in this period of economic upheaval to help the state to financial recovery," Cornell President David J. Skorton said. "Even while we're making fiscal adjustments to deal with the current economic situation, Cornell is the economic engine that supports our community as we continue to be a leading economic engine for the state.

But I think the most interesting quote is found in a recent interview with the Alumni Magazine, where Skorton positions Cornell as uniquely able to lead the state, country, and the world out of the depths of the current crisis:

Skorton also believes that the current crisis offers an opportunity for Cornell to play an important role in the economic recovery—and beyond. "We have the assets to be extraordinarily helpful as the community, the state, and the country dig out from their problems," he says. "Isn't this one of the places where we ought to be tackling the thorniest problems? What other entities in society have this breadth of expertise and inquiry? This is our time to be part of the answer to problems that don't just go away."

Skorton has started to provide the visionary language needed to lead and inspire, but it remains to be seen just what type of strategic changes are in store that will serve to "reconfigure" the University to face our collective challenges.

You can read the full methodology here, but the good news is that Cornell does a lot better than it did last year when we lost to Stanford in the first round; we lose to Duke in the finals:

The thing to remember is that this doesn't attempt to control for the relative differences in the alumni bodies at the different schools. Something tells me that a lot of agriculture and architecture majors -- two programs that Duke doesn't have -- are bringing the Cornell average down. After we control for the fact that Duke isn't interested in the safety and sustainability of our various food sources, Cornell might very well edge outs its Tobacco Road competition.

And if we can't beat Duke in the rat race, at least we can beat them on the lacrosse field -- Cornell lacrosse is set to square off against Duke this afternoon.