All,
I again attended the meeting of the goverenor's task force to suggest what to
do about the impending demise of the college of Santa Fe. The accoustics in
the room were terrible and so my report will be more brief. Also, there seemed
to be an attentive reporter from the New Mexican there, so I imagine there will
be something fairly informative in tomorrow's papers.
Briefly, something seems to be taking shape for higher education in Santa Fe.
Economic analyses seem to suggest that the impact of having (or losing) the
college upon the city of Santa Fe is of the order of HUNDREDS of millions of
dollars. (sic!) In other words, the City cannot afford not to save or replace
the college. The outlines are as follows:
(1) City of Santa Fe takes ownership of most of the campus through a bond
issue. The rest is obtained by state or other enterprises having to do with
education.
(2) Laureate College leases 3/4 of the campus and takes change of the College
of Santa Fe. On this scenario, the college is up and going in the fall.
Laureate is a for profit enterprise that boasts 500,000 students world wide.
It can sustain substantial losses for a few years and is apparently willing to
do so, but believes that it can make a profit running an art school here, if it
can lease the property from the city at market rates.
(3) Something else educational will happen with the rest of the college and the
rest of the land.
I still think, even within this frame work, there is a place for a framework
that embraces all the educational and quasi educational institution in the city
as The City University of Santa Fe. Laureate U. seems possibly a benign
force under the present circumstances, but we dont want them wagging the Santa
Fe Educational Dog. And I still think it is important to pull together the
people in Santa Fe who feel they benefit from having institutuions of higher
learning in the city.
I just cant think how.
There is another meeting of the task force from ten to noon THIS wednesday,
probably it's last meeting.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
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