Wednesday, December 24, 2014

All We Want For Christmas - and Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and Winter Solstice: The Meritocracy Agenda, Part One


by Dr. Ellen Brandt

There still seems to be some confusion about what tasks the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project is going to tackle first - because they are easiest to tackle first - and which components of the project will require substantial coalition-building before we can move forward with them in any significant way.

So we thought it might be a good idea - at this point in the blog series and at this point in the project - to outline Bring Back the Meritocracy!'s two highest-priority Agenda items for the New Year 2015, followed by a discussion of the longer-term tasks we hope to begin tackling in the next twelve months.

We're going to put forth our Agenda as a three-part blog sequence, so readers can easily copy and send individual parts of the whole to those in their networks and circles who they believe might be interested in and need to know about the project. Those friends and acquaintances may include university administrators, professors, and researchers, as well as elected officials, foundation, think tank, NGO, and corporate executives, and media and Internet leaders.

This blog covers Priority Item One on the Bring Back the Meritocracy! 2015 Agenda: Persuading all eight Ivy League administrations to set up on-campus offices focused on helping their own financially-at-risk graduates and alumni, many of whom, we believe, will prove to be over the age of 40 and all of whom will fall into the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" category.

We also hope the Ivies will agree jointly to set up an All-Ivy Office focusing on financially-at-risk graduates and alums, which might also serve as our central office for the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project.

This office can be based on one of the eight campuses or, for purposes of convenience, in New York or Washington, D.C. As the project's Founder, I would naturally hope to be asked to administer this office and am willing to relocate to do so.

Among the major tasks of these offices, both on- and off-campus, in 2015:

*** Telling everyone they are there! Ivy alumni have to know they are finally welcome to be alumni, even if they are going through difficult times financially. The Ivies - and all the other schools which will subsequently launch such programs - desperately need to be proactive about this growing problem right under their noses, rather than dawdling and having to react only after the problem has turned into a bona fide worldwide crisis.

*** Setting up pools of (eventually substantial) funds from existing endowments or brand-new dedicated endowments which can grant immediate cash to alumni for extreme financial emergencies and later offer them more substantial funds under loan programs akin to existing student loan programs - albeit more efficient.

*** Offering emergency medical and dental services to alumni at low or no cost - programs already offered, in many cases, to "underserved populations" which have no real ties to our universities other than geographic proximity.

*** In certain cases, providing emergency housing on campus for alums in dire need, who would otherwise go homeless.

*** Working creatively to make sure no Ivy League alum, of whatever age, stays in a position of extreme financial distress for an extended period of time. This means helping each and every at-risk alum find lasting, productive work somewhere in the world to provide for his/her continued ability initially to survive and eventually to thrive once more, based on her/his education, experience, intelligence, and talents.

*** Working with each university's faculty and research staff to launch creative long-term studies which will identify at-risk alumni around the world - who they are, where they are, and why they are - and how top-tier universities can work both individually and collectively from this point on to ensure that in the future, there will be fewer and fewer "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" individuals - until there are none.

*** Coming up with a plan to replicate the eight Ivies' successes with the above program Agenda and extend it, first, to other top-tier universities in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world and subsequently to all universities and colleges in the U.S. and abroad.

Again, readers should feel free to copy and circulate this three-part blog sequence to anyone they wish, in the hope of getting greater and greater exposure for this important Agenda.

Part two of the blog sequence continues with a discussion of Bring Back the Meritocracy!'s second high-priority Agenda item for 2015: the formation and launch of "new-old-style" venture capital funds for founders and early-stage entrepreneurs in the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" group.


Agenda 2015, Part Two: Venture Capital Looks Backwards - and Forward: Time to Fund the Mature and Highly-Educated Once More:

http://destituteivyleaguer.blogspot.com/2014/12/venture-capital-looks-backwards-and.html

Agenda 2015, Part Three: The "Meat" of the Matter: For-Profit Peace Corps and Unmet Needs

http://destituteivyleaguer.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-meat-of-matter-for-profit-peace.html





Read about and consider joining with us in the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, a non-profit, non-monetized, non-partisan, and non-controversial long-term project helping the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub