Cornell Insider

a blog by the writers of the Cornell Review

Archive for August, 2009

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Response to Bilmes on Internship Equity

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on August 15, 2009

Bilmes linked to a NY Times article today about the increasing number of interns that are working without pay for the prospect of future employment opportunities. His sympathies seem to lie with the underpaid (or not paid) and overworked summer intern:

The employer, on the other hand, gets an eager worker for a whole summer, without having to pay for wages, insurance, or anything else. Seems like a pretty good deal.

The problem is that many students cannot afford to work as an unpaid intern. These jobs are often in cities such as New York or Washington with high rent and a high cost of living. (Libby’s rent actually seems cheap; I paid more than double that to live in DC.) And while there are some college programs (such as Cornell’s Meinig program) which help to offset summer expenses, most students do not have access to grants or other sources of funding.

The result is a widening of the class divide. The children of wealthy parents can afford to take unpaid internships, which then translate to better jobs after college. Poorer students cannot afford to take unpaid internships, so they are at a disadvantage when it comes to job searching.

Libby is the Cornell student referenced in the NY Times article.

If a student’s financial situation was the only thing dictating whether or not he or she was able to do internships during summer breaks, it would be difficult for me to disagree that summer internships helped maintain/widen class divides. But I think it’s more complicated than that. Lots of factors determine whether or not a college student gets an internship (beyond the student’s actual qualifications as an applicant). For example, my friends who are studying government or international relations had a much easier time finding positions as think tank interns than people studying math or engineering. Location matters too. I live right outside of D.C., so I don’t incur any of the high costs of rent inside the city. Finally, connections are important. Yes, sometimes having connections is synonymous with being wealthy, but that’s not always the case. So I’m not entirely disagreeing with Bilmes on the “widening of class divides,” but I think we do need some more data to support this point.

I do however disagree with this: “What’s the solution? For one, companies, organizations, and even the U.S. government should sign a resolution to pay their interns at least minimum wage. In many places, this will not cover the cost of living, but students will not find themselves in as much of a hole.” I won’t attack this point from a “hands off the free internship market!” perspective. But I do think that many of these internships are not even worth minimum wage compensation, and organizations do interns a favor by allowing them to intern with them for the summer. Lots of organizations, especially think tanks, do not have the funds to pay a group of interns to read DrudgeReport all day while organizing an occasional conference. If anything, such a resolution would reduce the total number of available internships and increase the role of nepotism/connections in internship searches.

His second recommendation, though,  is more practical: “Second, universities should make more funding available to students for summer internships. How about a program at Cornell in which rising juniors and seniors with at least a 3.6 GPA can receive $3,000 to cover summer expenses if they take an unpaid internship?” These wouldn’t be handouts, they’d be rewards for good performances! Good idea, in my book.

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More 2010 Speculation

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on August 14, 2009

Continuing our recent series of posts on the 2010 midterms (my initial post, and then a revised argument) here’s an article by William Schneider that points to the unlikelihood of a “1994 repeat” for the Republicans in 2010. Schneider argues that Obama’s approval ratings are higher than Clinton’s numbers before the 1994 midterms when Bill was also pushing for health care reform, and that there is not an overwhelming resistance to general changes in the health care system:

Critics warn that overhauling health care would mean too much government control. As Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., put it, “The Democrats believe that you’ve got to change the entire health care system in America, including the so-called government option, which we believe would lead to a government takeover of the health care system.” Actually, about three-quarters of Americans say they think that it is “necessary to make major structural changes in the nation’s health care system” to make sure that all Americans have health insurance (77 percent) and to reduce health care costs (74 percent).

I don’t disagree that public opinion might be more favorable towards Obama’s health care reform in 2009 than it was towards Clinton in 1993-1994, but it’s obvious that this will not be the only decisive issue for voters in 2010. Schneider admits this in his own article: “Remember ‘angry white men,’ the hot constituency in 1994? They drove a huge backlash against the new Democratic president and threw the Democrats out of power in Congress. What made them so upset? The threat of ‘Big Government’ — taxes, gun control, and health care reform.”

What could drive a “hot constituency” of conservatives/independents in 2010? A few things come to mind: health care reform, increased taxes, the government stimulus, cap and trade legislation, White House transparency (maybe overblown, but how did Axelrod get all those emails??), oh, and Joe Biden! Even if the conservative aren’t manning the barricades against health care reform, there’ll be plenty of other crucial issues that could drive an anti-Democratic backlash in 2010.

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Stress and Sleep Deficits in College

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on August 13, 2009

According to a new study published by in the Journal of Adolescent Health (via Inside Higher Ed),  ”stress” is the most significant factor that inhibits normal sleep patterns in college students. The thousands of Cornell students who have taken Psych 101 with Maas already know that eight hours of sleep is necessary for optimal function during the daytime. This study investigated the factors that drive irregular sleep patterns:

Sixty-eight percent of the college students surveyed reported that “stress” was the factor that “most interferes with initiating sleep.” The next most popular rationales identified were “temperature” at 10 percent and “light or noise” at 8 percent. More than half of those who reported that “stress” kept them awake at night clarified that the stress was “academic” in nature as opposed to “emotional.”

This strikes me as a bit odd. From my personal experience, there are several reasons why college  students stay up late in dormitory settings and don’t get enough sleep: 1) Lots of interesting people to hang out with after “bedtime”;  2) Finishing assignments that could have easily been done earlier in the day. 3) Not feeling tired because of irregular sleeping patterns on the weekends, which are caused by some combination of drinking and sleeping in. Maybe my sample of Cornell friends are more “mellow” than the average group of college students, but I’ve never heard of anyone having sleep problems because of overwhelming academic stress.

Two observations. First, all of the research was conduced at one “unidentified ‘urban Midwestern university.’” There’s a lot of room for error when you use data from one university and treat it as a representative sample for all college students across all universities. Second, stress was concluded to be the thing that most interfered with “initiating sleep.” Perhaps the way in which the question was phrased altered the students’ responses. It is possible that the normal dormitory distractions that I mentioned accounted for later bedtimes, but the students responded that “stress” was the actual thing inhibiting immediate sleep once they got into bed.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Cash In On Peanut Allergies.

Posted by Joe Bonica on August 10, 2009

Here is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the emergence of companies focusing research on cures for autoimmune diseases in children as highly viable stock options for investors (for the non-medically minded, autoimmune diseases are ones caused by some sort of genetic or environmental factor other than a bacteria or virus, like food allergies or asthma). This is an issue that’s particularly close to my heart, as autoimmune research is some research I would like to do when I graduate, and it also serves as a very powerful segue into another argument of mine, that there is room for the free market in medical research. Article here.

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MRM # 11

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on August 10, 2009

- The zamboni driver at Lynah will in fact be retiring.

- The new Forbes “America’s Best Colleges 2009″ does not deserve its own post and/or analysis. Cornell came in 205th, with ECAC rivals Union (26) and Colgate (29) coming in hundreds of places ahead of Big Red. I know you guys are trying to be different than U.S. News, but c’mon!!

dubai_skyline_picture3

Dubai Skyline...as glamorous as it seems?

- No MRM is complete without Krauthammer’s most recent health care reform proposal.

- A disturbing, yet darkly funny article about a Paraguayan child who turned about to be alive at a wake after being declared dead. Look out for the DailyMail’s informative graphic of Paraguay’s confusing location.

- Another week and George Will continues his assault on the global warming hysteria.

- I’m not a big Twitter fan, but the most recent application of the technology is particularly interesting – John Quincy Adams’ diaries are now being posted online in a pseudo-time-travel blog. After a book, a movie, and now Twitter, seems as if the Adams are the most high-tech founding fathers thus far.

- A must-read article about the shady business police investigation work in Dubai that is targeting and accusing foreign investors and entrepreneurs to take the fall for a sliding economy. The harsh investigation procedures led a frightened ex-French-intelligence businessman to utilize his old skills and escape the country via a complicated underwater scheme.

Posted in Campus Insiders, National News | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Sotomayor Approval

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on August 7, 2009

Yesterday, the Senate approved  Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. The final vote was 68-31, which was a closer margin than John Roberts (78-22) but less divisive than the Alito approval vote (58-42). Few people doubted her eventual confirmation, and the distribution of the final vote was nothing short of predictable and expected. Only time will tell which Sotomayor will write opinions as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: the judge who believes in the power of empathy and experience or the Supreme Court nominee who describes her judicial philosophy as “fidelity to the law.” In the meantime, David Bernstein from VC has a comical response to a NY Times writer who claims that Sotomayor is about to “take on one of the most demanding jobs in the land”:

Let’s see. Each Justice has to write eight or nine opinions a year, plus several dissents or concurrences, with the assistance of four law clerks. While doing so, they manage to write books, lecture, and take the Summer off. Justice Thomas travels the country in his Winnebago. Other Justices have cushy lecturing jobs in Europe. Some elderly Justices almost literally have to be carried out of the Court when they die or become mentally incompetent, because the job is so “demanding.” It’s hard to see how an 89 year old Justice Stevens could keep up if he had the “one of the most demanding jobs in the land.”

Powerful? Yes. Intellectually challenging? Yes. Stressful? It would stress me out to have to decide, e.g., whether abortion would be legal, but the Justices seem to cope a lot better than I would, and they do have a lifetime job and no boss, which eliminates two major sources of stress for many people. Among the most demanding in the land? Hardly. My impression is that many lower court federal judges work much harder year-round than the average Supreme Court Justice.

Interestingly enough, the man who wrote the original NY Times piece, Adam Liptak, is the Supreme Court Correspondent of the New York Times!

As far as the most demanding job in Washington goes, I would case my vote for White House Chief of Staff. You’re basically the second most powerful man in the world, you work non-stop ridiculous hours, and you have to take care of all the small details at which the President can wave his hand. Most Presidents go through multiple Chiefs of Staff. I give Rahm until after the 2010 midterms.

Posted in National News | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Aid debacle

Posted by Oliver Renick on August 5, 2009

I’ve always told aspiring high school students and various people I meet not to be frightened by the high cost of attending an Ivy League university. Just apply, I say. You never know, I say. Ivies give lots of financial aid, I say. Yet, as August 5th rolls around and the payment deadline of August 11th becomes scarily closer, I continue to wait on pins and needles for my financial aid package. Where is it?? Who knows?? How much have I received??

I am not the only one waiting, however. At very least, several other Cornellians I know personally have yet to receive information about their grants, scholarships, and aid money. There must be many other students eagerly awaiting their package as well though: each time I call (it has been many times now) I am informed that my folder is complete and ready to be analyzed, I am just waiting in line behind others whose information needs to be processed. So if it is now six days before the deadline, there must be quite a long line of people. So what are hopeless poor chaps like myself supposed to do? Don’t bother calling the office, because they experience a “high volume of calls” just about 24 hours a day.

After hours of waiting on the phone to no avail, I decided to go straight to the source – the bursar’s office! Surely Mr. Bursar would have the information I need! The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, my name is (see blog author name). I was hoping you could give me some information regarding my financial aid package.
Mr. Bursar: Yes, what seems to be the problem?
Me: Well, you see, I haven’t received it yet. How am I supposed to pay my bill if I don’t know what it is?
Mr. Bursar: Well, I can’t answer any of your questions about your package but I can tell you to go ahead and pay the same amount you did last year.
Me: Hm…that is kind of difficult. What if my family earnings are different from the last year?
Mr. Bursar: …are they?
Me: Yes! Yes! Quite significantly! I should be getting more money!
Mr. Bursar: In that case, we will refund your money on the second semester’s bill.

This, my fellow Cornellians, is preposterous! How does nobody in that office not see the lapse of logic here? Asking me to pay a bill without knowing the price is completely ridiculous. I want to invite the head of Fin. Aid to my house, and not give him directions; see how easy that is! And did my financial situation change? Of course! That’s why it is called ‘financial aid.’ Cornell is supposed to aid my finances! Are we not in a serious economic recession?! If there is one time when financial aid should be extra speedy it should be when…nobody has money!

Luckily, my situation is not quite as detrimental as others could be. But how is this a legitimate answer, to say, “pay the same amount last year and if it is a surplus, it will be refunded.” Take the extreme situation: last year a family where on parent provides income made $90,000. One of the parents feels the crunch of the crisis and loses his/her job, taking another one, only providing $40,o00. That is a humongous difference to the FA office and will cause a substantial change to the parent and student contribution.

On top of all this, even if the package is not received in time, students are expected to pay the late few of 1.25%! At very least, students who did not receive their award before July 28 should have the late fee waived.

As a disclaimer, the man in the Bursar’s office was friendly and helpful (to the extent he could be), and if the FA office reads this, please do not take away my money. Thanks.

Posted in Campus Insiders | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

The Sun’s Updated “161″ List

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on August 4, 2009

I was informed of this update from The Sun via Bilmes’ blog. He claims to have done 45 out of 161, and my count currently puts me at 27. I’m not sure if this was on last year’s list, but this one gets my vote for the most ingenious thing that every Cornellian must do:

21. Bury a bottle of Bacardi on the Slope. Dig it up on Slope Day.

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Changing Near Eastern Studies Landscape

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on August 4, 2009

On the FP blog (via Inside Higher Ed), Marc Lynch discusses the influx of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan into academia and how this will affect the field of Middle Eastern Studies (“Near Eastern Studies” at Cornell):

[The influx of veterans] is something I’ve thought about a lot, especially since agreeing to take over as the director of the Middle East Studies program at the Elliott School of International Affairs. Graduate programs in political science and Middle East Studies have already begun to see a steady flow of applicants back from Iraq (including, among many others, my research assistant from last year). I expect that over the next decade, this will turn into a flood as smart, young veterans look to put their experiences into a broader perspective and to apply their hard-won granular knowledge to broader academic and policy problems.  (And not only military veterans — there are plenty of civilians, contractors, and NGO workers who have worked in Iraq as well.) Most will pursue MA degrees, while some percentage will decide to continue on to a Ph.D. I think this an unequivocally good thing — and I wonder if people have given serious thought to how it might change the field of Middle East studies.

Lynch goes on to say that he doubts that the inflow of veterans into academia will result in more “right leaning” departments but might instead push the academic emphasis towards pragmatism and empiricism over ideological doctrine. I would disagree on this point. My father tells me that at least at the undergraduate level, veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan tend to bring a distinct conservative message to classroom discussions. Moreover, at higher levels of academia, it sounds like “pragmatism and empiricism” could serve as watered down substitutes for “conservatism.”

It will be interesting to see how the flow of returning veterans will affect the overall political atmosphere at American colleges- both within academic departments and at the undergraduate level. My guess is that we shouldn’t expect a complete turnaround in the liberal tendencies of most American institutions of higher education- there simply aren’t that many returning soldiers to lead the cause- but that the influx of veterans will bring some moderating influences to many undergrad classrooms. If some of these veterans pursue doctorates and end up in teaching positions, we may definitely see more favorable accounts/understandings of Iraq and Afghanistan emerging in academic circles in the coming years.

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MRM #10!

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on August 3, 2009

- The government’s “cash for clunkers” program ran out of cash, but people are still lining up with clunkers. Now Congress wants to throw $2 billion more to continue this “fleet modernization program.”

- Taking a page out of Alexander Tyler’s book, Bill O’Reilly cites Benjamin Franklin on the end of the republic and weighs in on the health care debate. According to his article, 65% of Americans want fewer government services and lower taxes.

- Krauthammer also discusses the retreat of Obamacare.

- The RCP Blog has a telling piece on media bias in the treatment of two powerful African American women, Condoleezza Rice and Michelle Obama.

- Sorry hippies and health-conscious consumers, but a new study finds that organic food has no health benefits over ordinary food.

- This week’s Economist leader is all about Obama. The British newspaper criticizes him for delegating too much to Congress and coming up short on his health care and energy reform promises.

- The Nixon Center (my internship spot for the summer) recently hosted a panel discussion on the future of the Republican Party and its foreign policy.

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