Which To Cut, Activities or Academics?

The answer, according to a forthcoming paper by Cornell researchers, may be academics:

The research findings of Cornell University graduate student Douglas Webber and Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, show a higher positive correlation between graduation rates and spending on student services - including things like student organizations, additional educational tools, and health and registrar services - than between graduation rates and instructional or research spending.

By this logic, Cornell should cut academic-related expenditures before cutting student services. This finding would support the cause of SA members and others who scrambled to ensure that Slope Day would receive full funding this spring, while largely doing nothing as some academic programs and the Physical Sciences Library were axed.

I don't think many people at Cornell are too concerned about graduation rates, except maybe for the hockey coaching staff. Richard Vedder, head of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, makes this point by massaging our egos a little:

"This to me shows there are tradeoffs," he said. "[With research], you may be paying a cost in terms of hurting student services to the point of decreasing graduation rates. For the Cornells it doesn't matter, but at the State College of Last Resort, it does.... I'm just putting more emphasis on it than they are."

Thank you to the author of the article, the current Daily Sun managing editor, for keeping that line in there.