Mon 27 Jun 2005
Robert Coombe ‘70, has been named as the new Chancellor at the University of Denver.
“Bob Coombe is the best person to lead the University of Denver forward at this promising time in its history,” said Burns. “His keen ability to identify and develop opportunities for DU to gain academic stature convinced the board that he should be our next chancellor. He will have the trustees’ full support.”
“The enormous changes that have happened at our University have been supported by a culture of open-mindedness and creativity, a culture of integrity rooted in solid values, a willingness to embrace change as opportunity, and an uncompromising demand for the highest quality in all that we do,” noted Coombe, who is in his 24th year at DU. “The great University that Chancellor Ritchie has always spoken of is truly within our reach.”
Coombe looks to be the younger brother of John, ‘68. More on Robert here and here. Those interested in academic life will have fun checking out the minutes of a DU faculty meeting here and here.
Note in paticular the reference to merit scholarships. The smart folks at DU realize that the more that they can attract talented students the better off the university will be. If that means scholarships for rich kids, then so be it.
June 27th, 2005 at 7:42 am
The issue of who should get scholarships is obviously a fascinating one. I think it becomes an issue of justice in the most universal sense, that is, justice being each receiving his proper deserts. The question becomes, then, do kids who might be able to pay for any school regardless deserve additional money simply to incentivize attendance?
Evan Miller had a really fascinating post on this on WSO a while back, but he seems to have taken it down. Oh well. His basic argument was that so long as we fund low-income kids to go to College at, say, state universities, everything’s fine, because attending *any* university has proven, if you look at the income statistics, to be sufficient to allow people to hoist themselves up the socio-economic ladder. Thusly, elite colleges like Williams should feel free to throw their money at the most worthy rather than the most needy. Not sure where U of D fits into this equation.
I certainly wouldn’t say that’s a watertight argument, but I think it’s more interesting than a pure Darwinist let-the-strong-rise or Nozickian property-is-the-first right argument.
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What I found particularly interesting about the U of D scholarships is that there were ones specifically for minorities, but that ignored need. This strikes me as somewhat paradoxical- it seems the very reason URMs might be uniquely deserving of aid is that they have placed in contexts that depress them socio-economically, and thus require additional help to elevate them (frankly, I think this is a really inefficient way of dealing with class inequity, but that’s another posting); disadvantaged from an initial position, justice for these people means special aid. The only way to validate this approach would be to suggest that the disadvantage of race somehow distributes itself across class (or any, for that matter) boundaries in a society that tends to put a particular race at a disadvantage.
Of course, if you see diversity as worthwhile within a university itself, suddenly this need-blind race-based fellowship becomes logical- if you need to incentivize attending to guarantee diversity (and thus justice for students qua students at a university) so be it.
June 27th, 2005 at 7:42 am
£$*%^!!! That was me again, hitting back and the failing to reenter form information.