Thirsty sluts for capitalism is a hilarious way to put it. I am genuinely thrilled for the students and keep trying to hold that feeling in my heart and mind but am ultimately having very complicated feelings about the change to David Geffen School of Drama. What I’ve observed from working at YSD is the Endowment is mostly for the undergrad colleges. Some of it is doled out to the grad/prof schools but generally they must provide their own raincoat and boots under the umbrella of Yale. A few are endowed on their own like Med, Law, Environment, and the Music school is also tuition free.
Ultimately Yale only wants to invest in a graduate/professional school that is going to produce alumni that will turn around and give millions back to the school. You are correct, it’s a shitty white supremacist model and YSD, Public Health, Athletics, Art, Architecture, Music (and others) historically don’t produce many of those alumni. In fact I recently learned that the school of Public Health gets less money than we do at YSD and I didn’t think that was possible. Considering how much they’ve leaned on Public Health in the last year, I think it's pretty shameful.
Since the Great Recession Yale has been *very* cautious about the Endowment, cutting budgets, and talking endlessly about rainy days. We had gained some ground back before the pandemic and then boom it’s gone back to ITS RAINING DOOM. Cut. Everything. So enter DG SR to save the day. From my perspective the people in charge are not imaginative enough to reinvent the wheel so their solution is to slap some shiny rims on and just keep rolling. Which considering all we’ve been through this last year (and how much anti-racism work we've been been doing at YSD for the last 5 years) is just depressing AF.
Your concise summation echos my feelings on the subject, so thank you and I hope my comment answered some of your questions. In my opinion (again someone who just works there, though our leadership is pretty transparent about our budgets which is why I feel comfortable making this comment) this would have *never* happened without Geffen's money. We had almost gotten to tuition free around the time of the Great Recession (when President Salovey was Provost) and it's been a gradual backslide to putting more and more monetary burden on our students with less and less resources while tangentially becoming aware we need to step it up in quality of education. Much of that has had to do with what is the economy + who is the Provost (and whether the Provost thinks we're worthy of money or not) and some has to do with bigger+more=better thinking of our direct leadership/theatre in general. Hopefully future leaders will steer us towards a more moral budget and business model but at least for now this lifts a burden off of our students.
Thirsty sluts for capitalism is a hilarious way to put it. I am genuinely thrilled for the students and keep trying to hold that feeling in my heart and mind but am ultimately having very complicated feelings about the change to David Geffen School of Drama. What I’ve observed from working at YSD is the Endowment is mostly for the undergrad colleges. Some of it is doled out to the grad/prof schools but generally they must provide their own raincoat and boots under the umbrella of Yale. A few are endowed on their own like Med, Law, Environment, and the Music school is also tuition free.
Ultimately Yale only wants to invest in a graduate/professional school that is going to produce alumni that will turn around and give millions back to the school. You are correct, it’s a shitty white supremacist model and YSD, Public Health, Athletics, Art, Architecture, Music (and others) historically don’t produce many of those alumni. In fact I recently learned that the school of Public Health gets less money than we do at YSD and I didn’t think that was possible. Considering how much they’ve leaned on Public Health in the last year, I think it's pretty shameful.
Since the Great Recession Yale has been *very* cautious about the Endowment, cutting budgets, and talking endlessly about rainy days. We had gained some ground back before the pandemic and then boom it’s gone back to ITS RAINING DOOM. Cut. Everything. So enter DG SR to save the day. From my perspective the people in charge are not imaginative enough to reinvent the wheel so their solution is to slap some shiny rims on and just keep rolling. Which considering all we’ve been through this last year (and how much anti-racism work we've been been doing at YSD for the last 5 years) is just depressing AF.
Your concise summation echos my feelings on the subject, so thank you and I hope my comment answered some of your questions. In my opinion (again someone who just works there, though our leadership is pretty transparent about our budgets which is why I feel comfortable making this comment) this would have *never* happened without Geffen's money. We had almost gotten to tuition free around the time of the Great Recession (when President Salovey was Provost) and it's been a gradual backslide to putting more and more monetary burden on our students with less and less resources while tangentially becoming aware we need to step it up in quality of education. Much of that has had to do with what is the economy + who is the Provost (and whether the Provost thinks we're worthy of money or not) and some has to do with bigger+more=better thinking of our direct leadership/theatre in general. Hopefully future leaders will steer us towards a more moral budget and business model but at least for now this lifts a burden off of our students.