Fact Checker here.
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I note that only six members of the new advisory board are alumni, all out of Trinity College.
And I note that the controversial Bob Steel wedged his way in just months after being forced out as chair of the Trustees by term limits. Steel is one of four current or former Trustees who already are in a position to give advice. It's a shame that we don't look for more fresh people and involve them.
It will be interesting to see the Global Health strategy fall together, particularly in light of Duke's landing in the Chinese backwater of Kunshan.
Keep in mind President Brodhead's astute observation to the faculty two years ago that Duke has been "opportunistic" in its international moves -- in other words we followed the money. He called for overview and focus, a call that will echo hollow if Duke Health does not participate in Kunshan.
Fact Checker will have a full report about this as soon as more research is done. But this Chinese city looks pretty grim. No university, no airport. It has only one hotel with any stars within its boundaries.
It does have factories turning out computers and other electronics 24 hours a day -- and the laborers sleep eight to a room behind the walls surrounding their factories, to be secure in a city that's had crime problems and to be close at hand for seven day a week scheduling. The city fathers (you can still use that term in China since women don't play much of a role in local government) do have ambitions, and thus land which is exactly double the size of East Campus will house Duke-China.
It's going to be lonely on those 200 acres (I do not know where in the teeming city they are). The Fuqua Intercontinental MBA program -- the only specific so far -- will have students in this place called Kunshan only nine days a year.
To think, just seven weeks ago the Dean was talking of Shanghai. It makes you wonder how Kunshan bubbled up and snapped the other plans.
Fact Checker notes too that President Brodhead did not get anywhere near Kunshan on his much publicized trip to China and three other Asian countries in 2006; and Fact Checker observes that Brodhead has not kept his pledge to return to China every year or every other year, with India being his latest international trip.
Now a Fact Checker plan: while the law school has doubled in size in two decades, and Fuqua has come out of nowhere to embrace about 1100 students, the Medical School has continued to have classes of 99 or 100.
Tie this, please to the substantial surpluses at Duke Health for 9 consecutive years. Last year alone, $220,300,000. Almost a quarter BILLION dollars extra in the 2008-2009 fiscal year ending June 30, 2009! That's better than ten percent profit on the amount of money Duke Health took in from patients for their care. (About $2.1 billion gross).
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we used that pile of cash to expand our output of doctors. The centerpiece of our global strategy could be a requirement that each newly minted doctor make some contribution in these far-away places and help people for a defined period of time, in exchange for their Duke education paid for out of the stash.
✔Just a thought from Fact Checker.
Fact Checker here.
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Can someone please tell me precisely what facilities Fuqua needs for its International MBA program in each of its 5 cities.
The program involves only 60 days of classroom work total in all the cities. Plus "distance learning" over 14 months; my father used to call this homework.
Tuition: $120,000 this year, more next, not including travel. We drew only 2/3rds the number of students expected for September's inaugural class, and we had to pad the class with student from the US when far fewer from around the world applied, thus diluting the internationalization that is the heart of this.
The city in China will see Duke people for 9 days a year. Nine. A week plus another weekend.
That's how much time MBA candidates will spend in each city, a few more in London plus some in Durham.
What is this China building all about? To be used 9 days a year.
It's about the current Shibboleth in academia, that we are "international." Every school from Bob Jones University to Harvard is scrambling.
It's about the ego of administrators who think big buildings, who want to divert us from our crumbling ability to handle our campus at home.
Readers, did you see what this week's meeting of the Academic Council learned?
Professor Steven Grill at the podium:
“The grounds (on West, East and Central campuses) will not be kept in the splendor that we are used to,” Grill said, adding that faculty offices will be cleaned less frequently, trash cans will not be emptied daily and litter will not be picked up as quickly across the University.
Groundskeeping has to be maintained at its current level in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, at the Hospital and in athletic facilities, he noted."
Another Grill quote: “Our aspirations in the last year or two certainly have not declined... but the capability to fund all those aspirations has.”
Fact Checker endorses that thought. It's nice to have ambitions in China. It's even better to temper your dreams with fiscal reality at home.
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November 19, 2009
T-12
Fact Checker, you seem to have a big ego, you didn't really check any of the facts in the article (instead you wrote your own), and your check marks are really the mathematical radical symbol.
In any case, what troubles me most about this is, most obviously, the amount of money being spent. I'm willing to give them the fact that the center is useful for primate research (research being a core mission of the university), but is $8.2 million really the kind of emphasis we want to give to lemurs when we cant even spend a fraction of that to keep the staff from the MCC. I know I "don't get" or have access to the inner workings and logistics of Duke financing, but whatever the bizarre rationale for this is, I think I'm going to remain fairly skeptical. To a certain extent, it doesn't matter what the means are if the ends you're accomplishing aren't worth it in the first place.
Main question: why is "Duke" so blatantly prioritizing "happiness in another species" over the happiness of its own student body?
Sure, you can say this is an overstatement, that Duke cares much more about student happiness than the lemurs. This is undoubtedly true, but the main point is that, from this, we can see that the balance of priority is not stilted towards the students nearly enough.