What Killed Burlington College?

[SecularMotion]

The end of the school year doesn’t just mark graduation at Burlington College, the small Vermont institution led by Jane Sanders from 2004 to 2011. The school announced on Monday that it will shut down later this month, facing insurmountable financial difficulties. The closure comes after years of difficulty for Burlington College, a small school founded in 1972 for nontraditional students.

“It is with great sense of loss to the educational community that Burlington College's progressive and unique educational model will no longer be available to students,” the school said in a statement.

Many of the school’s financial difficulties date to Sanders’s tenure as president. She has been a frequent presence alongside her husband, Senator Bernie Sanders, on the presidential campaign trail. In announcing the closure, the school blamed the "crushing weight of the debt" from the purchase of a new campus in 2010, during Sanders’s tenure. Burlington said its bank had pulled the school’s line of credit. The college was already at risk of losing its accreditation—which is essential for receiving federal funds and conferring legitimacy—if it could not resolve its financial difficulties.

When Jane Sanders became Burlington College’s president in 2004, she had previously served as interim president at Goddard College, her alma mater, about an hour east of Burlington. Bernie Sanders served as Burlington’s mayor from 1981 to 1989. (Jane Sanders holds a a doctorate in Leadership and Policy Studies from the Union Institute, a nontraditional school that critics sometimes call a diploma mill. Union made national headlines during the 2012 campaign because Marcus Bachmann, husband of then-Representative Michele Bachmann, also received his doctorate there.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/what-happened-at-burlington-college/482973/

[corkhead]

1. So what, Hillary's husband signed NAFTA and killed my state. - Look at what has happened

to Michigan since her husband signed that agreement.

[Thinkingabout]

2. A little over zealous management lead to a big over reach. The college was not large enoigh to

Handle this large purchase, the banks did not get the pledge information as promised. Jane Sanders got a golden parachute, one of Bernie's complaints of corporations and now we don't he's about the golden parachutes from Bernie.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Don't the Board of Trustees have some accountability in this matter?

We almost lost my alma mater, Sweet Briar College, last year when the BOT out of the blue announced that there was overwhelming debt and the college would close at the end of August.

There were some shenanigans by the BOT in several ways: passive fundraising, passive recruiting, taking on debt for questionable projects, etc.

While the President for SBC should have been held accountable as well as the BOT, it wasn't just him.

BTW, the alums came together, raised the money to sue the BOT and President and in exchange for all of them leaving their posts and no criminal prosecution, we installed a new team and SBC just had its miracle graduation last Saturday.

My Point: There is more than meets the eye re. Jane Sanders.

[Igel]

5. Yes.

And when corporations do things we always lay the blame on the boards of directors and shareholders.

Not.

We focus on the CEOs.

So which is it? Do we really blame the CEOs or hold them to be lesser players in the game and focus on the BODs?

Perhaps we should just pick whichever suits us at the time and call that our fundamental values (du jour).