This is where Nancy should have been all along - the Newark campus of rutgers is not dealing with reputational issues - it is dealing with expansion of access of 4 year education to people who otherwise wouldn't have access to it. It has public money to blow. It doesn't have an alumni donor base to pis* off. I saw nothing inherently wrong with Nancy's experiment...except that killing the academic reputation of a private school with $35k tuition pushes it down to a level where it is forced to compete with schools that have $10k tuition. So the people who aren't beneficiaries of the big financial aid push (upper middle class kids choosing between a list of private schools), face an economic choice - and the value per dollar of a syracuse degree declines with the drop in reputation. Her ideas are fine - but the setting was wrong. And i'm upset about it because it's really hurt the reputation of this school and dumbed down the product (students) coming out of it at the undergraduate level - i know this having served as a mentor over the year - the kids are way less polished and sophisticated today then they were ten years ago. all of this is generalizing...but people make decisions through generalization (like who gets passed HR to the real interviews, which college to select, generalizations about intellect in social settings) - no one has time or the mental capacity to do much else most of the time. We use rules of thumb in decision making. Syracuse used to be in that category of 'good school, bet you had a great time there' when mentioned to people who don't know much about the school. that level is good enough to get you past HR. The new thing is 'syracuse has some strong programs not sure what they are outside of producing annoying anchors and staff for local tv stations'. that's not gong to get you past the HR round for good jobs.
Rutgers Newark is perfect for her - just wish she'd realized that 8 years ago or whenever she showed up on the hill.