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throwawayoverhe

7 karma · joined April 28, 2020

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throwawayoverhe··on Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds
They have endowments.

The colleges/universities that aren't managed by complete idiots use those endowments to hedge exactly this sort of risk.

There were a lot of articles over the past few years about various teeny tiny colleges investing their entire endowment in funds and yelling from the rooftops that they out-performed Harvard's endowment.

The bill is going to come due. Over the next two years, a lot of small colleges that were investing for annual returns instead of for ensuring institutional survival are going to collapse under the quadruple whammy of refunds, lawsuits, decreased enrollment, and decimated endowment.

throwawayoverhe··on Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds
> At what point will firms rank new grad candidates inversely proportional to the prestige of their university?

Never.

> Prestigious universities equate with more expensive candidates.

But that doesn't mean you rank those people lower. It means you offer them the job at the budgeted salary. If they don't accept the job offer at the salary range you've budgeted for the position, then you move on to the next candidate.

This might make less sense if there's a strong opportunity cost (i.e., missing a candidate because they already accepted a job), but that's not typically the case for new grads.

throwawayoverhe··on Is the Cloud Recession-Proof?
Interestingly, I had the opposite takeaway.

0.3% of monthly revenue from a single customer's reduced spending only a couple months in to a multi-year recession is pretty alarming.

Makes me wonder if OP's company is particularly exposed to retail, travel, or another sector severely impacted by the first order effects of the virus.

throwawayoverhe··on A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall
But this is on a thread about high school. You're way over thinking it. Just ratchet down the bandwidth available to the relevant machine (or straight up disable the video feed). Easy peasy. What's the teacher going to do, fail you for not being rich enough to afford a good internet connection? They aren't paid well enough to take that risk.
throwawayoverhe··on A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall
K12 is a lot easier because it's not residential.
throwawayoverhe··on A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall
STEM grad students are surprisingly expensive given how poorly they're paid and how valuable their work is (I say this as a former grad student, but also as someone who budgets for them).

Universities will now have to cull "overhead". Grad students and professors will have a golden opportunity about 1-2 years from now to capture a less tiny fraction of the wealth they create. Don't let it go to waste.