Should Tech Go Private?

Poll on this question

  • yes

    Votes: 55 52.9%

  • no

    Votes: 49 47.1%
  • Total voters
    104
chewybaka

chewybaka

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
909
OldJacketFan said:
Someone earlier raised this in a thread. I didn't give it a whole lot of thought initially but given some of the issues being discussed on here does Tech, by going private and leaving the University System of GA and not having the stacked BOR control degree programs, gain an advantage worth making the move.

I don't know how much money Tech actually receives from the State of GA but it's endowment is approximately 2 billion dollars. A comparison school, in many ways, is Vandy. Their endowment is approximately 4 billion. Vandy is eligible for and accepts TN's Hope scholarship money so I can't imagine Tech would lose that funding source.

To me, on the surface, it would make sense for Tech to go private in as much as it's mission is vastly different that the majority of schools in the University System. Is is practical? I don't know but I do think it's worth being explored.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

The land and the Facilities value make this virtually impossible...
 

RLR

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
355
Endowments. GT's endowment is small. GT doesn't have a medical school. This is a huge factor. Look at Emory's endowment. The University's endowment is pooled with its healthcare operation and I think other separate entities like the Carter center. On the other hand, almost all alumni who donate to their alma mater donate to the their undergrad school, not graduate or professional school. Furthermore, most new wealth in America is tech related. GT will likely outperform Emory in alumni donations, if they don't already. Nonetheless, Emory still recieves huge inflows from institutional donors, mostly related to healthcare.

Healthcare. The downside of Emory's current co-mingling with healthcare is that there is great uncertainty about the future of the industry and healthcare eats a huge portion of Emory's credit line. Google Emory and wellstar merger. It fell apart in the 25th hour for reasons that won't be discussed openly. This uncertainty presents two huge challenges: (1) Emory's long-term strategic decision making is frozen until the healthcare question is answered; and (2) an internal power struggle is conceivable along health care vs. non-healthcare lines.

EmTech. A partnership between Georgia Tech and Emory is the most natural and justifiable collaborative effort that I can imagine. Really, we're perfect fits. GT's computing, analytical, info tech, etc. makes emory's public health & medical research so much more attractive to federal grants (the lifeblood of research). You could also point to the BME program. GT' and Emory law are also starting to collaborate. IMO, the law partnership is doomed to fail. Basically, GT engineers would get b.s. from tech and the equiv of a masters from Emory law in like 5 or 6 years, something like that. The problem is anything other than a J.D. in law is utterly useless. It's a shame b/c Georgia Tech could have a top 14 law school (no legacy cost + guaranteed employment for law students with STEM background). The downside to the partnership is that GT is only partnering with one-side of the power struggle at Emory. So, it would be inaccurate to think Emory is fully supportive of it. Also, I suspect - but have no knowledge - that the board of regents is forcing Emory to partner with UGA and GA State in order to partner with GT. If that's true, then I'd strongly support privatization, if that's even possible. An important thing to remember - Emory does not consider itself part of Atlanta. There is an annexation war going on in Atlanta. The majority of Emory does not want to be part of Atlanta. This is tragically stupid. (1) the commute between GT and Emory now takes over an hour during a workday (2) if emory annexes to anyone but Atlanta, I have to think that the blowback would kill any form of mass transit (3) Emory is poisoned by this idiocracy of being the harvard of the south. they wanted nothing to do with the olympics. they don't want to be associated with this city in any way.

Ivy League's Suck. I know more about Ivy League governance than any human being cares to know. Here's a quick summary, again based solely on the school's internal governance
  1. **** harvard & their 28 billion endowment. league of their own.
  2. Yale's liberal arts school entrenched themselves in the internal governance process and its impossible to uproot their hold. If a culture war continues in America, Yale will be crushed by a media ****storm.
  3. Princeton is a more moderate version of yale
  4. Brown really, really, really wants people to know it's an ivy league school, but it's really just fluff;
  5. Columbia and Penn are all about the $. They are run like a PE firm, and I mean that as a compliment
  6. Non-ivy league. Rice doesn't pass the smell test; John Hopkins seems like a bunch of smart lunatics, emphasis on the latter; Chicago's time has come and gone; Northwestern seems like Emory but with stronger grad schools; Stanford is awesome & they could care less whether you agree; Vanderbilt seems to be well run; Duke seemed like Vandy but with more internal opposition.
Talent Wars. There are insane talent wars going on for at least some GT professors. That's really all I can say. Going private wouldn't solve this issue. there isn't a school in the nation that could offer what some of these headhunters are dangling.

The way forward. I'm currently researching this topic. I'll check back-in in 6 months. my initial thoughts are positive though for the future of GT. We're a remarkably distinct school with a willingness to collaborate between our disciplines. We don't have political legacy costs. we're free to disrupt. actually, i suspect that GT is being asked to disrupt by higher powers than state government. The world is about to change. Drastically. And GT has the people and assets in place to guide this coming development. The main question I have is can GT effectively manage COI and align incentives for researchers, corporations, R&D grant providers, and venture capital. I hope the answer is yes, but i haven't begun the inquiry. In the meantime, read-up about some of the things we have going on:

http://www.ien.gatech.edu/research/optics-photonics
http://www.cdait.gatech.edu/
http://www.robotics.gatech.edu/about
http://www.energy.gatech.edu/transportation
http://www.energy.gatech.edu/
http://www.manufacturing.gatech.edu/gtmi-strategic-plan
 
iceeater1969

iceeater1969

Helluva Engineer
Messages
9,674
RLR said:
Endowments. GT's endowment is small. GT doesn't have a medical school. This is a huge factor. Look at Emory's endowment. The University's endowment is pooled with its healthcare operation and I think other separate entities like the Carter center. On the other hand, almost all alumni who donate to their alma mater donate to the their undergrad school, not graduate or professional school. Furthermore, most new wealth in America is tech related. GT will likely outperform Emory in alumni donations, if they don't already. Nonetheless, Emory still recieves huge inflows from institutional donors, mostly related to healthcare.

Healthcare. The downside of Emory's current co-mingling with healthcare is that there is great uncertainty about the future of the industry and healthcare eats a huge portion of Emory's credit line. Google Emory and wellstar merger. It fell apart in the 25th hour for reasons that won't be discussed openly. This uncertainty presents two huge challenges: (1) Emory's long-term strategic decision making is frozen until the healthcare question is answered; and (2) an internal power struggle is conceivable along health care vs. non-healthcare lines.

EmTech. A partnership between Georgia Tech and Emory is the most natural and justifiable collaborative effort that I can imagine. Really, we're perfect fits. GT's computing, analytical, info tech, etc. makes emory's public health & medical research so much more attractive to federal grants (the lifeblood of research). You could also point to the BME program. GT' and Emory law are also starting to collaborate. IMO, the law partnership is doomed to fail. Basically, GT engineers would get b.s. from tech and the equiv of a masters from Emory law in like 5 or 6 years, something like that. The problem is anything other than a J.D. in law is utterly useless. It's a shame b/c Georgia Tech could have a top 14 law school (no legacy cost + guaranteed employment for law students with STEM background). The downside to the partnership is that GT is only partnering with one-side of the power struggle at Emory. So, it would be inaccurate to think Emory is fully supportive of it. Also, I suspect - but have no knowledge - that the board of regents is forcing Emory to partner with UGA and GA State in order to partner with GT. If that's true, then I'd strongly support privatization, if that's even possible. An important thing to remember - Emory does not consider itself part of Atlanta. There is an annexation war going on in Atlanta. The majority of Emory does not want to be part of Atlanta. This is tragically stupid. (1) the commute between GT and Emory now takes over an hour during a workday (2) if emory annexes to anyone but Atlanta, I have to think that the blowback would kill any form of mass transit (3) Emory is poisoned by this idiocracy of being the harvard of the south. they wanted nothing to do with the olympics. they don't want to be associated with this city in any way.

Ivy League's Suck. I know more about Ivy League governance than any human being cares to know. Here's a quick summary, again based solely on the school's internal governance
  1. **** harvard & their 28 billion endowment. league of their own.
  2. Yale's liberal arts school entrenched themselves in the internal governance process and its impossible to uproot their hold. If a culture war continues in America, Yale will be crushed by a media ****storm.
  3. Princeton is a more moderate version of yale
  4. Brown really, really, really wants people to know it's an ivy league school, but it's really just fluff;
  5. Columbia and Penn are all about the $. They are run like a PE firm, and I mean that as a compliment
  6. Non-ivy league. Rice doesn't pass the smell test; John Hopkins seems like a bunch of smart lunatics, emphasis on the latter; Chicago's time has come and gone; Northwestern seems like Emory but with stronger grad schools; Stanford is awesome & they could care less whether you agree; Vanderbilt seems to be well run; Duke seemed like Vandy but with more internal opposition.
Talent Wars. There are insane talent wars going on for at least some GT professors. That's really all I can say. Going private wouldn't solve this issue. there isn't a school in the nation that could offer what some of these headhunters are dangling.

The way forward. I'm currently researching this topic. I'll check back-in in 6 months. my initial thoughts are positive though for the future of GT. We're a remarkably distinct school with a willingness to collaborate between our disciplines. We don't have political legacy costs. we're free to disrupt. actually, i suspect that GT is being asked to disrupt by higher powers than state government. The world is about to change. Drastically. And GT has the people and assets in place to guide this coming development. The main question I have is can GT effectively manage COI and align incentives for researchers, corporations, R&D grant providers, and venture capital. I hope the answer is yes, but i haven't begun the inquiry. In the meantime, read-up about some of the things we have going on:

http://www.ien.gatech.edu/research/optics-photonics
http://www.cdait.gatech.edu/
http://www.robotics.gatech.edu/about
http://www.energy.gatech.edu/transportation
http://www.energy.gatech.edu/
http://www.manufacturing.gatech.edu/gtmi-strategic-plan
Click to expand...
Thanks for the lenthy and thoughtful post.
While this is a football blog, I see your ideas to strengthen gt as an overall effort strengthening the school as a big positive for football program.
If we can get bold leadership to fight our way into the emory affiliation, perhaps smart football players from around nation could take a few emory courses to customize their gt degree with spotts medicine flavor.
I am not hopeful but PERHAPS we could demand that the uga bor comprmise on the emory affiliation.
Would love to see multiple high level sports med collaboration research efforts. Also We could teach classes on their campus and they could teach some on our? .Seems like this is the future of education.

As an aside at graduation in ME in 1969, I was offered opportunity to stay and get masters while working under a professor doing design of joint replacements parts.
I think it was w emory but dont know.

Hope to hear more soon.

In mean time our only option for major improvement in football seems to be to raise more money to recruit harder. We would do this to recruit harder in current areas and add a national recruiting effort in those major cities / suburbs that produce talented football players.
 
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