WAS SCHOOL “FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED?” AND IF SO … WAS IT FOR THE BETTER?
|| By FITSNEWS || The president of Converse College – Besty Fleming – announced her intention to step down this week at the end of the school year. Fleming has led the Spartanburg, S.C. private liberal arts institution for the last eleven years – and last fall announced a bold plan to slash tuition.
Converse isn’t government-funded, but it has availed itself of tax-exempt bonds …
Just last year the school issued $35.4 million worth of these bonds through the South Carolina Jobs-Economic Development Authority (SCJEDA) – an effort to refinance prior borrowing “used to renovate classrooms, administrative offices, student housing, aquatic and athletics facilities and a dormitory, as well as build a corridor road through the Spartanburg campus.”
At the time, the school stated its refinancing would retain 212 jobs.
Did it?
According to insiders at the school, Converse has lost an estimated 20 percent of its staff due to “voluntary or involuntary” departures within the last year. This has resulted in a “gutting of several academic areas” – even as Converse continues to ramp up its athletics programs.
Our sources also lamented the “imperious manner of outgoing president (Fleming) reflected in numerous profanity-laced tirades and inartful remarks directed at staff and faculty.”
Whoa …
This website praised Converse for its cost-cutting efforts last year … although we did reference reports of financial problems at the school.
Our take?
Converse will rise (or fall) based on the free market. Unlike the government-run schools … which will continue to bleed taxpayers dry no matter how well or how poorly they perform.
Of course we had no idea at the time this “private” institution was availing itself of crony capitalist financing …
Oh well, it’s only a matter of time before the higher education bubble goes pop.
In the meantime, we continue to believe government should have absolutely no role whatever in the business of higher education – whether via direct subsidization of institutions or the manipulation of financing.
13 comments
Fleming would never have been GIVEN the job if her mother were not on the BoT at the time
Fuck FITS, there probably are just a handful of colleges across the nation that don’t take some type of government subsidy or tie-in (example: the new GI Bill)
Bob Jones? maybe but I doubt it
For profit “colleges” like Phoenix “University” and other semi-bogus “colleges” that fuck over their students who take in GI Bill recipient and are on the verge of getting banned by the VA……….those are great institutions of higher learning – right?????
You get on a soap box about government funded schools and bitch,bitch,bitch then on the other side of your mouth you slam private universities when they have a fuck-up
Maybe you ought to put your money where your mouth is and start up your own damn “university”
What you want to bet your kids end up in a state supported college and not a totally non-government subsidized school. When they do end up at a state supported school be sure to let us know.
Something tells me you will quietly let that shit go our the back door.
And I won’t be a bit surprised……………………….
“What you want to bet your kids end up in a state supported college”
Didn’t Will go to USC?
Seems like he did go to University of South Carolina
So IF he did go there and NOW he thinks that that is NOT a core function of government to provide education that begs the question:
Is he home schooling his kids, sending them to private schools or are they attending public schools???
If they ARE attending public schools I don’t want to read another fucking word or rant from him dissing state supported education.
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Oh, I would be willing to bet in the early days of this blog that when his wife first started pumping out babies that it was on the Medicaid dime.
Follow the money. 1. Recommend “free market” solutions and small government. Translated: privatize what it is. 2. Cronies make lots of money and slip some your way for helping to set it up and promote it. 3. Recommend more “free market solutions” 2. Cronies make bucks. Send some your way (along with the lobbyists, marketers, sham think tanks and assessment companies, politicians). Rinse and repeat.
So, you would approve of ending the SC Tuition Grant program that many SC students use to attend SC private colleges?
Me, too.
jEDA makes it easy for everyone to go into debt. Tax exempt schools borrowing with tax exempt bonds. Gees. Will it ever end?
Fleming has a fairly vile personality and has relied exclusively on family connections for her career
Back in the early 70’s – mid 80’s the Nu-Way Lounge on Kennedy St. in Spartanburg was a real popular place (it’s still there and has great bar food and is the oldest operating bar in Spartanburg, BTW). It was frequented by shitloads of Wofford and Converse “kids”. back then.
We “locals” called them “Wally Woffords” and “Connie Converses” and you could spot both types as soon as they walked into the bar (just like you could tell a GI a mile away back then). The “Wally’s” just oozed Greek/southern preppy and the “Connies” would NEVER EVER look like the “girl next door”.
The image has changed a little but you can still usually spot the “Wally’s” I haven’t seen near as many “Connies” as I used to. I’ve heard tell that Converse has gotten the reputation of being a haven for “chick-lickers”.
Saw two young women “sucking face” at Hickory Tavern (on Spartanburg’s east side and a mile or two up the road from Converse) one late afternoon and was 99% sure they were “Connies”.
I only know one kid that attended Converse, & he went there because he was a total fuckup that couldn’t get admitted to other places, but Converse admitted him conditionally.
Now is Converse a haven for fuck-ups? I have no earthly idea, only my anecdotal experience…but his well to do parents had to put him someplace.
He even managed to flunk out there despite his parents connections and money.
Fleming actually ended up marrying one of the college’s biggest donors…why is that not surprising?