Private colleges have more in common with hedge funds than with public universities. This observation, I suppose, was either completely intellectualized by much of Williams’ student body or outright ignored by the rest. Of course, Williams offers training and all that goes with it, but we students are nothing less than interested investors working with a savvy broker.
This is the part I’m sure many of you have intellectualized. Obviously, attending a private or public college is itself a personal investment – an “investment in human capital,” as economics courses like to call it. The difference between private colleges and public universities is a bit more subtle, however. While a public university is a state-owned organization primarily interested in increasing economic productivity and specialized skills among the population it serves, private universities act as investment banks, supported by offering a high return on investment to its individual investors.
Like any investment bank, Williams College must be fundamentally selfish. The only way the College can achieve an acceptable return is to make the best investments and earn respect through its long line of clients: students. This reasoning can be used to explain most decisions made by the College – financial aid can be seen as an investment in its own right (with returns in the form of increased prestige and possibly donations from low-income students. top performers), as well as updating our graphic design with a sleek cartoon cow, as well as continuing to invest in fossil fuels.
It becomes even more complicated when you consider the variety of services that the College must provide in order to maintain the investment in human capital (education). Williams is acting a bit like a business here. And recently, in the refectories, the College is stretching. It would be dishonest to obscure the reasons why we’ve all noticed this: Dining rooms serve us less efficiently, with longer queues and lower quality offerings than in the past.
In an effort to keep catering costs low this semester while explaining it all, the college created a few stories, many of which were on display on October 6. Save article on personnel issues. The inescapable answer here has been the apparent “labor shortages” following the pandemic. Any student with basic microeconomic knowledge knows that just saying “there are labor shortages” doesn’t shed much light on how labor markets actually work: the higher the wage you offer. is high, the more applications you will get. For this reason, it is curious that the Director of Food Services, Temesgen Araya, did not respond to the proposal to increase wages for the right dining room staff – not to attract “highly skilled workers.” »To serve gourmet dishes, but to increase the staff enough so that The dining room can
function.
Offering higher salaries and keeping a larger workforce can badly impact Williams’ bottom line. However, this move would certainly improve the general welfare and education of its students, as well as the economic welfare of all dining hall staff.
If we want to fight Williams’ selfish ways, what should we do? The first step would be to realize the broker-investor relationship we have with the College, which I alluded to earlier. Then we should become less interested as students. I believe most of us students would much prefer our dining room employees to be paid adequately. This is the easy part – the difficult part is identifying the subtle ways in which we are most selfish.
It seems that part of maintaining a prestigious college, with a reputation that promises to win us powerful positions and big paychecks in the future, involves using large chunks of the budget for things that don’t. provide nothing necessary for our education. To forestall the more common criticism – that the Williams budget is tightly constrained by necessary obligations – I will use the Northern Science Center renewal project as an example. When the building opened last winter, universal enthusiasm could be heard around campus regarding the new space.
Consider the stated intentions of the project to “create the necessary laboratories and classrooms, modernize the facilities and bring them into line with modern academic and code standards.” Were these stated goals really necessary? And even if we take that for granted, was this expensive, shiny building really the only way to achieve it? How much of the budget for this project could have been used for the salaries of the dining room workers? And here’s the key: How many students would give up on this one project for the welfare of the service workers who make our education possible? Once they realize that the Northern Science Center was a budget allocation and not just a pretty backdrop, I think most would consider it.
Like any other rational economic agent, Williams College will pursue a particular investment strategy as long as it has a potential return. So when an investment in oil risks a reputational decline that outweighs the return on investment, the oil money crumbles. This is what separates Williams from hedge funds – the College must respond to the moral objections of its clientele. And this is how we can make changes in this school. Student pressure is one of the most important factors in all decisions of the College, as we have great control over its reputation. If the reputation of the Order weakens, so will its results. This strategy has worked at Harvard and many other schools with divestments in fossil fuels, where student-led movements have managed to deflect the administration’s arm.
If you want Williams to stop treating its catering staff unfairly, speak out loud and condemn the College harshly – do the dirty work. Picket. Do the sit-ins. Stop doing college favors. Stop being the smiling student on the Williams brochure.
There is no reason why you should judge our esteemed administration less than you would judge Berkshire Hathaway. President Maud Mandel is not that different from Warren Buffet. While their businesses may look different, they are basically doing the same thing. If enough of you stop pampering the managers who run this place, you might just get what you want.
Justin Piccininni ’24 East from the Bronx, NY