First off and much more important that the headline/subjectline for this post, I want to congratulate this year’s graduating EMU students and their families. Way to go! I was at a function last night and I had the chance to talk a bit with the mother and brother of one of our graduating graduate students, and it really was one of those moments where I felt very good about my job, the mission of a place like EMU, our students, and the whole nine yards. So again, congrats, have fun, and good luck.
Now, there are some other graduating students at that quaint liberal arts school with the football team in Ann Arbor, the one where much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued when they were not going to be able to graduate in their beloved “Big House” and when they were going to go over to EMU and Ypsilanti (God forbid!). Not surprisingly, the AANews has a couple stories about it (well, at least the blog does– I haven’t seen the paper newspaper yet). There’s “Diag venue a first for University of Michigan commencement but not necessarily unique,” which is kind of a run-down of U of M graduation locations through the ages. More interesting perhaps is “University of Michigan’s Diag ceremony is hardly a low-budget affair,” which reports that U of M is spending $1.8 million on this alternate graduation plan on the Diag.
Say that with me slowly: one-point-eight million dollars for commencement. At “Education First,” we get year after year after year of budget cuts, and at U of M they can throw nearly two million at one day ceremony.
Anyway, I was thinking this morning that there might be a moral out there with this story, maybe some lessons that we can try to apply here at EMU.
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