REPORT ON THE 2005 AYA ASSEMBLY

FROM:   Dave Toomey, Class Delegate to the AYA

This year’s Assembly was entitled “In After Years …” and was advertised as being focused on what Yale does to prepare undergraduates and graduate students for life after Yale. While there was some of that, a great deal more of the conference centered on reports about current conditions at Yale and future plans for the university (read “money”).

The conference convened in Batelle Chapel on Thursday morning, November 17.  After introductory remarks by Michael Madison, ’83, the Assembly Chair, there was a  discussion by a panel consisting of Peter Solovey, Dean of Yale College; Jon Butler, the new Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Robert Alpern, the new Dean of the Medical School; and James Bundy, the Dean of the Drama School.   Interesting points:

--   while Yale College adheres to its philosophy of a liberal arts education that develops intellectual skills without determining what they will be used for, it is now the case that graduating seniors are going directly into the work force instead of seeking advanced degrees, and thought has to be given to preparing them for that quite different experience;

--   70-80% of the Graduate School PhDs and 50% of the Science PhDs will teach, and not enter the private work force. A PhD at Yale is now taking an average of 8-9 years to complete, which is too long. The Graduate School is changing its focus from just teaching to helping students learn to teach, which has not been a priority before.

--   the purpose of the Medical School is to advance medicine, not just train doctors.   Yale is the only medical school in the country, which requires its students to do a research thesis before graduation. The school’s biggest problem is dealing with the debt of graduating students.

--   again, the biggest concern of the Drama School is student debt.   Another concern is one of employment; 10 years out, only 50% of the acting graduates are working in their areas of expertise. Employment opportunities are greater in the less “visible” specialties like set design, lighting, etc.

After the panel discussion, we broke out into smaller groups: one for the Schools of  Medicine, Public Health and Nursing; one for the Graduate School and the School of Music; and a third for the Schools of Law, Management and Forestry/Environment. I attended the latter. It came as no surprise to me that the Law School representative reported that, after 5 years in private practice, only 24% of the graduates reported themselves satisfied with their careers; this is a problem for not just Yale. Work is being done to better prepare the students for their post-graduate life.

In the afternoon, we attended a lecture by Deborah Davis of the Sociology Department who was to speak about the transition from life at Yale to real life, but her lecture took a broader form. She made the following points:

--  higher education has become popularized. While 2/3rds of the American colleges are private, 2/3rds of the students attend public colleges. United States colleges give vastly more degrees than the rest of the colleges in the world combined.  35 of the largest 50 universities in the world are in the United States.  3% of the GNP is spent on higher education in the United States; while the second largest share of GNP spent on higher education – the entire European Union – is 1%.

--  the total number of people being educated at American colleges is vastly more than it has ever been.

--  there are now more women who are college-educated than men and more women with graduate degrees than men.

--  in 1940, the same number of women got degrees as men, though most of them went into teaching. From 1940-1980, women were significantly less likely to go to college than men. But now, women are more likely to go to college than men.

-- there has been an enormous relative gain in managerial and professional workers over other professions.

-- women are more likely to be in the work force and to stay there longer

-- the wealthier the student is, the more likely he/she is to major in the social studies and the  humanities.

-- the selective colleges sent most of their graduates to the for-profit world.

-- there is a distinct economic payoff for those who graduate from the selective colleges.   The average earnings of all college graduates are $55,000, while the bottom quarter of the graduates from selective colleges earn an average of $67,000 and the top quarter from selective colleges earn an average of $86,000. So the person graduated from Yale is likely to be a higher earner than most college graduates.

Thursday evening, we attended the Yale Medal Dinner in Commons. Those from the Class of ’60 who attended included Toomey, Wells, Weber, Harris, Van Dine, Bing, Dickerson, Dickinson, and Lloyd.

On Friday morning, there was a new set of 11 breakout sessions, each involving a different aspect of Yale’s current activities. I went to the two discussed below.

The first was on Yale Investments, conducted by Seth Alexander, the Director of Investments. Yale’s investment plan has two objectives, which sometimes clash:  stable cash flow and maintaining the fund’s purchasing power. The traditional way in which colleges, including Yale, invested, was to buy stocks to tolerance, then spend the rest on bonds. The problem was that, as to bonds, the more you invested the less you made; and stocks suffered from extreme volatility. The answer was to diversify.

Yale has taken another approach. Since 1985, Yale has moved from 65% in equities to 20% and 10% in bonds to 5%. Everything else is in what used to be called “other” -- real estate, timber, hedge funds and venture capital funds.    The average college investment fund today is 50% stocks, 30% bonds, and the rest in “other”. Yale’s investment is 25% in stocks and bonds and 75% in “other”. The results have been amazing: since 1995, the asset value of Yale’s holdings has increased 399% against a median increase of other universities of 160%, and has averaged an increase of 17.4% a year. Whereas 20 years ago the endowment supported 10% of Yale’s operating costs, it now supports them 30%. Needless to say, the audience pronounced itself satisfied!

The second breakout I attended was on Admissions, let by the new Director of Admissions (and former head of the AYA) Jeff Brenzel.   He discussed two aspects of admissions in general – the adoption of the “Single Choice Early Action” program in place of the old “Early Decision” program, and the admissions process.

As to the former, Yale abandoned “Early Decision” – which required the accepted student to come if he/she was admitted, because it became convinced that it distorted the high school experience and ruined the high school senior year, and because it hurt Yale’s efforts to improve diversity. Under the new program, a student can apply early only to Yale, but, if accepted, does not have to accept. Only Harvard adopted the same approach, to Yale’s and Harvard’s surprise. It turned out that the reason was that early acceptances to Yale and Harvard, if they didn’t come, only went to Yale or Harvard, and other universities, including Princeton (yuk-yuk), didn’t change because they feared they’d lose students to Yale or Harvard but wouldn’t get any from Yale or Harvard, i.e., they weren’t confident they could hold their admittees.

Yale is very pleased with the results. The applicant pool for “Early Action” now looks like the general applicant pool and African-American applications are up 50%.   Yale leads the nation in the number of applicants for early admission – 4,000!    The admission rate is 17% of applicants vs. 7% of later applicants. And 85% of those admitted early accept their admissions and come to Yale. One of the reasons is Yale’s new scholarship program under which no tuition is charged to children of parents making less than $45,000, and there is a sliding scale up to an income of $80,000.

The downside of Yale’s popularity is that Yale now has to reject 90% of its overall applicants. In the most recent year, over 20,000 students applied to Yale, and only 1200 were admitted. Of those 20,000, only about 5,000 could be rejected immediately as not being competitive with the applicant pool (which does not mean that they were not qualified, just that they didn’t measure up to their competition.)   The remaining 15,000 are qualified in every respect, which makes the job of the Admissions Office a daunting and heart-rending one. The first step is to have the resumes read by Area Readers, who select the best in their areas.   Those resumes are then read by Out-of-Area Readers and difficult cases get a third reading.   The committees then submit their finalists. This inevitably results in an over-admission – last year there were 2,000 resumes, which reached this point. The final steps are to make the excruciating choices among highly qualified students.

Jeff was asked whether it helped to be a legacy. Jeff responded that a legacy has a 21/2-3 times better chance of getting than a non-legacy statistically, but that an analysis done by the Admissions Office concluded that, for the most part, they would have gotten in anyway because they’ve had the advantage of highly-educated parents and, in many cases, the opportunity to go to the best schools. Even with the advantage, 75% of the legacy candidates are turned down, which undeniably hurts the University.

At lunch, Linda Lorimer, the University Vice President and Secretary, spoke of what alumni can do to help Yale. She urged the alumni to assist the graduating students by internships and programs like “Bulldogs in the Blue Grass”, and noted that a number of similar “Bulldog” groups have been formed both in the United States and abroad.

There followed a session for Class Officers and Delegates conducted by AYA personnel.   This covered matters such as the resources AYA can supply to classes, and the value of various class initiatives, such as mini-reunions. We were able to report that we have had great success with our mini-reunions in bringing the class together, and were surprised to learn that we are in the minority at having such get-togethers. The other class officers and delegates were also amazed at our fellowship programs and sought more information about what we do and how we do it.

The closing event of the Assembly was the annual address by President Rick Levin.  His speech introduced a new capital campaign, which will be launched in the Fall of 2006.  He started by addressing a question raised by a New York columnist – why give to Yale when it’s so rich?   The answer is that the endowment contains the gifts given in the past for the intentions of the past, and the investment return on those gifts, which is used largely to cover current operating costs. If the endowment were left where it is, it would be unable to respond to new fields of study, such as nanotechnology and the like. New money is needed to fund research and instruction in new areas that past donors never dreamed of, as well as the physical plant to support them. The objectives are:

-- for Yale College, to expand the science programs and the new initiatives to make science and math part of the liberal arts curriculum in line with the recommendations of the Brodhead report, to develop international studies, and to expand financial aid;

-- to improve the facilities for the arts, including the drama school;

-- to be tops in science and medicine, including 2-3 new medical research buildings;

-- to develop an international student body with a goal of 25% of the graduate students and 10% of the undergrads coming from other countries; and to expand overseas research and study for American graduate and undergraduate students; and

--to address an urgent need for more housing for law school and graduate school students.   

President Levin gave the following answers to questions from the floor – the university is beginning to study the effects and cost of adding two residential colleges, but this is not a priority right now; and the university will continue to expand its engineering programs but the focus will be on environmental and biomedical engineering, the strategy being to be the best in new areas.

As always, the Assembly was very interesting and, at times, inspiring.   It is well worth attending.