August 19, 07
Hi From Yazz Allen!
(Contact me directly at YazzAllen@Yahoo.Com)
From time to time, I get email messages from people who read my writing about Antioch College. What follows is an example worth reading.
Below is a parody (NOT the real thing) of a "Harvard Business School Journal Case History" about Antioch College and Leveraged Buyouts. Written by a non-Antiochian (Boston College '59 grad) who is pulling for Antioch College to survive the current closedown crisis. It's a joke, but some of it is eerily "on the level," I think.
It's very good, and I share it for all to read here. It's followed by (gloomy) commentary about it from me. I hope my attitude and optimism will improve. Things currently (Aug. 2007) seem dark to me.
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Harvard Business School: Leveraged Buy-Out Case-Book
Case No. 46: Antioch College
Antioch College is susceptible to a virtual leveraged buy-out managed by any administrator with his/her hands on the controls. The plan begins with the formation of a holding company called Antioch University. This entity takes shape by inaugurating start-up “campuses” with mailboxes in Seattle, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Keene, NH as well as on the original campus in Ohio. These places offer mail-order graduate degrees and are staffed by a non-tenured, adjunct faculty. They key their offerings to existing professions (teachers) in need of advanced degrees. They also lobby state legislature to ensure that the states “raise” quality standards for teachers by requiring masters degrees.
The satellite campuses drain off money from the original campus so that old Antioch College becomes a liability, compelling the administrators of Antioch University to announce its temporary closing. New, non-tenured faculty will be hired in 2010. In the meantime, the bills have to be paid, and so the south twenty acres, bordering Allen St., are sold to a developer willing to pay top-dollar for land nestled against the remaining college campus. Construction jobs are promised to the locals, many of whom worked at the college but have since been laid off.
A new entity called “Antioch College” reopens in 2012, but now as a branch campus of Antioch University. It is given a permanent mailbox and is perhaps managed by a dean on full salary with benefits. In any case, it offers mail-order bachelors degrees administered by its non-tenured, part-time faculty. Some of the old campus buildings, especially the lab buildings, are leased out to start-up research companies because they offer quality locations. The old dormitories, no longer needed for a non-residential student body, are contracted out to Dayton businesses wanting to use them for corporate retreats.
In 2015 the administration announces that Antioch University is solvent and that “Antioch College” is not doing so badly itself (financially, that is). Satisfied with their work, the administrators vote themselves a raise and the chancellor resigns with a handsome buy-out package. He is said to be considering a high post at Oberlin College… er, ah…, I mean “Oberlin University.”
Thank you for your kind email message and the attached article about Antioch and a leveraged buyout scenario.
I think you got it right.
The school is beseiged by sharks and the bad guys currently seem to have the upper hand.
Much talk about using the school property for an old age home location has been put forward, and dorms in OK shape presently have been sized up for that, according to reports.
But.......overall.....your evaluation of the mentality of sharpie administrators (and millionaire trustees) is correct.
It's a shame the school is so vulnerable to the current attack on it, and also that alumni and others don't seem (at present..Aug. 2007) to have the wit or organizational skills to fight off the attackers.
Antioch College is an important school, not just to the alumni, but to the entire higher ed scene in the USA and the world beyond.
Many have observed that the middle classes of the world are disappearing, and only the very rich and very poor will remain.
Same is true with education. Only the wealthy will attend residential higher ed. schools (the traditional prestige schools) and everyone else will be consigned to University Of Phoenix type internet correspondance, voc-ed schools.
The great renaissance of residential higher ed available and embraced by common, non-aristocrat people seen in the 19th and 20th centuries is ending.
Higher ed for non-aristocrats will not include culture or critical thinking skills....not any more.
Antioch seems a victim to this trend.
The big money for higher ed is like the big money for reliable cars and substantial housing.....only the very rich can afford it, and the rest of the world is getting shoved into what's left, which is not much.
I think the world (and certainly the USA) is moving into a "Dark Ages" period where the rich will run things from behind castle walls...very high walls....and what goes on outside the walls may be grim, and certainly unsanitary, uncultured, and uneducated. Good-bye democracy, hello return of aristocracy.
That's, overall, what the assassination of Antioch College is about. Antioch doesn't fit into the new world, where the rich will go to traditional prestigious residential schools, and everybody else will get correspondance courses from U. Of Phoenix type schools aimed at voc-ed, and certainly NEVER encouraging critical thinking or independent or creative thought or creative anything. What the "workplace" waiting for voc-ed college grads wants is pliant, compliant, docile entrants, as masochistic as possible. NOT fiesty, self-sufficient Antiochians.
