Auctioning Off Radcliffe

It was a social occasion, and I was having a casual chat with a staff person from one of the lvy League sister schools (not Harvard/Radcliffe). This woman mentioned, in passing, that the presidents of these colleges held regular meetings, and, among them, the Radcliffe president was regarded as mildly ridiculous because she had the title and the salary and came to the meetings but had no responsibility for admissions, instruction, discrimination, tuition, housing, campus crises or other badges of office.

That incident happened three or four years ago, but I was sharply reminded of it within the last couple of weeks when I read in a Radcliffe P.R. newsletter about a "Presidential Summit" that had just taken place in North Carolina. This occasion, organized by the Radcliffe College Alumni Association (RCAA) and the Harvard Clubs of the Carolinas, featured a meeting between Linda S. Wilson, President of Radcliffe "College," the President of the University of North Carolina, the Chancellor of North Carolina State and the Dean of Duke University Law School. Topics of discussion included affirmative action, the impact of information technology, the role of the federal government in higher education and ethical considerations in research and in the academy. It's not clear exactly what expertise President Wilson might have brought to the table, especially on the last item.

I have occasionally marveled at how Radcliffe College manages to leave the impressions that there is still, somewhere, the old Radcliffe-that traditional undergraduate women's college. A recent document issued in January, the Report of Radcliffe Giving, continues the practice of showing groups of young women and labeling them only as "seniors," or "students." It is as if "Harvard" were a dirty word. This, despite the fact that it is more than 20 years since the last undergraduate students and the last professors were handed over to Harvard. It is a great game and must have a great payoff, and it is wonderful to see how skillfully it is played. I wonder how many of us old grads donate to Radcliffe under the impression, even now, that the women's college still exists.

However, I take a dim view of the persistence of the "Radcliffe College" fictive shell. I perceive in it a faint odor of deception-it is as if the March of Dimes were to call itself a "medical school," because, after all, it too is in the business of medical research, educational opportunities for doctors, seminars, healing and raising money.

I also perceive, and these are just my untutored perceptions in our generally materialistic society, a lawyerly, understandable, but morally untenable desire to hold on to money that was originally given to benefit a different Radcliffe. The Radcliffe endowment has now reached $200 million-peanuts next to Harvard's $10 billion but pretty healthy for a non-college. Radcliffe has a bigger endowment than two-thirds of U.S. colleges and universities, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

There is a sense that the Radcliffe image is being auctioned off, piece by piece, to the highest bidder. For example, it is possible to become a full fledged member of the Radcliffe Alumnae Association upon completion of a package of non-credit, continuing education courses. The secrecy in which alleged negotiations are being carried out reinforces the notion that there is something to hide. This year in its "Report of Giving" Radcliffe has concealed much of its administrative outlay under a heading of "programs and financial aid." I believe a more accurate accounting of overhead would show administrative costs of close to 50 percent, or about twice the normal expectation for a nonprofit institution. Let us hope that the undergraduate ghost gets laid to rest before too much more of the capital gets spent.

Claire Kaplan Lipsman graduated from Radcliffe in 1945.