Why You Should Never Donate to Babson
Comments(9)
Here’s a little financial tip that will help all those who will soon be graduating: never donate your money to Babson. Now, I know a lot of people might be saying, “why would you not want people to donate?” Well, there are several reasons, so bear with me as I hit all of them.
First, donating to Babson is the literal equivalent of donating to your toilet. You wouldn’t take wads of cash out of your wallet and flush it down the toilet, would you? So why would you hand over wads of your money to people who will do just that? It makes no sense at all.
Here’s what $5 does for Babson: nothing. Sure $5 across many people adds up. So maybe we can use that money for a Segue for our new president. Or maybe we can redo the entrances again because it really has been a couple months and they feel left out. Or we could pay the salaries of completely useless people in completely useless positions in the administration. It could go towards any one of a million stupid things around here.
So you say maybe it goes towards helping someone, like that it keeps tuition down. I say where is this discount in tuition, as my debt level from this school is disheartening. Should our tuition really be $60k per year? Because it’s absurd at $45+ already. Sure, maybe that ~$15k is subsidized by donations, but isn’t that just a Band-Aid for a bullet wound? So what does that really solve, then? You’re just contributing to the problem because you’re helping Babson not face the bigger issue, which is that they handle cash worse than my 7-year-old niece.
Which brings me to my next point: you’re not doing Babson any favors. The more money they get, the more they think they are doing things right. You think giving money helps the school in the long run, but it doesn’t. It only makes them hire more idiots and put off firing the ones we already have. It makes them justify wasting money because after all, if they don’t waste it then they won’t have as big of a budget next year.
Here’s a fact: if you donate a little money, they ask for more. If you donate nothing, they ask you why not. Now, if you consider that, which do you think gets more done around here–the administration continuing to throw money in the garbage, or the administration getting feedback on what they need to do in order to EARN your money?
Which brings me to yet another point: Babson should earn your donations. Yeah, they have good teaching quality. You already paid for that with $175+ tuition over 4 years. The sad part is how Babson convinces you to think that $175+ is not enough for the education you received. You have to be kidding me. If you believe that, then I also own this bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in buying. Not that Babson should take you out for dinner for your donation, but what are they doing for future classes of students that they need direct funding for? Where precisely is your money going? “Athletics” or some other general category doesn’t tell you anything. You could be putting money into “Athletics” and have it go toward new fold-out chairs for PepsiCo. Ask tough questions, and if you don’t get solid answers then you’re wasting your money.
I’d say the worst excuse for donation is that it’s going to help you in the long run. Ok, let’s say we get donations and therefore participation up, which might help bring our ranking up. Then what? It won’t bring it up more than a few spots in the rankings based on participation alone, it’s only a small part of a long equation for calculating rankings. Even if it did, what is that going to be worth by the time you see the benefit of it? After you’ve been in the work force for a while, it doesn’t matter where you got your undergrad. Plus, whether you graduate from here or from Wharton, if you’re graduating with a 2.0 then does it really matter where your school was ranked?
Going along with that, here’s an interesting thing: The last few years, donations from the senior class have been increasing, and yet our ranking has been decreasing. Judging by that trend, we should probably stop donating in order to get the ranking up…well, ok, that’s obviously not a logical deduction, but my point is really just to show that participating to help ourselves is a myth.
Basically, all I’m trying to say is think twice about it. Hell, think three or four times about it. It’s your money. When your parents aren’t paying for everything, every dollar counts. Donating gets you nothing at Babson. They will throw you a barbecue, yippie, as if you don’t deserve it just for surviving here for so long. Notice they never even said “Thank You” for the $175+ you already donated through tuition. You get at least that much when you buy a Snickers at 7-11.
If you want to donate, knock yourself out. It’s your money, you can do whatever you want with it. But if you think for one second that someone out there is benefiting from it, you’re very much mistaken. Actually, you’re not…there are several construction companies that make a killing off our school’s stupidity. But if you think you’re helping the Babson pseudo-community, THEN you’re mistaken.
If you’re not convinced at this point, then I have one last point to make, which is probably the most important of any of the points I’ve made to this point: there are much more deserving organizations out there. At least donate to your high school. Or a charity that helps the poor and needy. Or maybe another organization that will use your dollars to directly help those who need it most because there are a lot of people that worry about what they’re going to eat this week or where they’re going to sleep, and they could use your money a lot more than the company that’s going to build the next flag fountain.
This school is way too caught up in itself to consider the people that surround it and ultimately support it. It’s time you made a stand against that. Donating money only pushes them to continue the same way they have been. Save your money at the very least. Or show them by example that people are what matters, and that you care about others the way they should be caring. Until you do, then the school as a whole will never support the people that support it, and we will continue to have places like crapcampus.com because Babson has no idea what the concept of “community” is. If you want better things for future classes, make Babson earn it, and until they do, then your dollars are much better spent at places that really need your money and will use it to its maximum value.
Anyway, if you’d like, I’m also accepting donations that will go towards a reparations fund for seniors for having to deal with all the garbage Babson puts them through. This way they have some extra money when they graduate to start their lives instead of getting bled dry before they make their first dollar in the real world. Let me know if you’re interested.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 5:13 am and is filed under Craptain Hook, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
AIM to a friend or Set as Away 
Post to Del.icio.us
Loading ...
unfortunately…
i agree completely with your post.
babson, barefoot himself, admonishes those that don’t donate. ‘with your donations we could make a better school!’ they tell us. well, fuck that – i’ve heard that too many times. the president isn’t the president i thought a school like this deserves (wait – nm, they’re trying to fix that), my overall impression is that the administration has done a poor job.
so why should babson get my money? money earned doing a trait that babson didn’t come close to teaching me. so yeah, so sorry babson administration, i know you work hard, i know i’m an asshole for doing this, but i don’t plan on writing you any checks any time soon. i mean, how ironic is it that a school that teaches business has been so poor at serving it’s students?
craptain hook mentions we should ask the tough questions… well… does anyone know what would this senior fund be spent on? that’s something i’d like to see answered. and maybe if someone told me, i’d donate.
i’m not saying i’d never donate to babson. they just have to make a better case for it. i know that annual donations are a significant portion of fund raising. they help the school survive between the large gifts that come every once in a blue moon. without annual donations, it gets extremely hard to run a school. and though i am not pleased with babson (haha), i don’t want to see it go under completely.
but i’m with this philosophy of tough love: just say no to d-onations and babson will be forced to get better.
or not, whatever. i guess we could just continue to be the school that caters to rich kids and pretends there’s no problem forever and ever. but i’m just pontificating, right, a community member?
It’s such a conundrum… because Babson could be a great school that lives up to the “#1 in entrepreneurship” claim. But with the lack of improvement and response I’ve been seeing, I don’t want to piss away all my money. (not that I have any left)
I’d rather see the school shut down than give money to a hopeless cause.
I’ll admit, I’ve made my pledge, but it won’t be fulfilled till I submit a nice checklist that must be fulfilled by Babson first. And when I pick exactly where the money goes, I think I’ll choose something specific. Perhaps it can go towards “paying the IT guys to make the crapcampus blog feed a standard part of the Babson portal.”
Many that donate specify where they want their money to go to. If you wanted to donate, you could specify that your money be donated towards the creation of a campus-wide blog system so students can discuss how much they like/dislike Babson.
Phone…while that seems like a good idea on the surface, it is not as nice as it seems. First, many of these places that you can “choose” to donate to are extremely generalized (i.e. athletics), where you have no idea where your money is really going but you sort of feel like you do.
But let’s say you actually give $5 over to Babson and say it can only be used for a new campus-wide blog system (like in your example). Well, while that’s nice, if Babson never creates a campus-wide blog system, then your money just sits there doing absolutely nothing. Since they are a non-profit, they are legally not able to take money that is restricted for such a project and move it elsewhere. So really your example is a prime reason why NOT to donate money.
I should say, though, if you’re going to donate a million dollars or something, then you can get around this. If you want to provide full funding for a specific project, the school is likely to do it and use your money, so why not knock yourself out, especially if it will help improve the school? I’m all for that. But I caution that, as well, because take a look at the flag fountain. Everyone wonders how that came to be. Well, Barefoot himself donated every penny specifically for that project because he wanted to do it, and now our campus is stuck with a disgusting, annoying piece of crap in the middle of it.
Anyway, my point is your donation options are much like the rest of Babson…they make it look nice on the outside, but when you understand what’s really going on it’s a huge mess.
Phone…. why give Babson money to copy something I already did? They’ve copied enough of my site already. I’ll just have to continue to innovate and they can copy my ideas. That’s my gift right there – an R&D department.
In response to Crapmaster…
You would rather see Babson shut down before you ever donate? That could be one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. You have already invested a lot of money into your degree why the hell would you want that to go to waste? If the school shuts down like you want it to- then your degree is absolutely worthless. If you continue your investment into Babson then your degree will become more valuable and what that could mean for you is a better job. I am hoping that is your ultimate goal, but giving your response you probably don’t get that either.
Allow me to elaborate before you put more words in my mouth…
If Babson heads down the road to nowhere (i.e. it just falls apart) my donation does no good, neither to Babson or myself. So like I said, why piss my money away when I could do something with it?
Let’s say I put $1000 in the stock market. With some research and luck, I could end up with $2000 next year. If I gave that money to Babson, what would I end up with? $0. Babson would end up wasting the money on something stupid or just plain lose it (which isn’t too far-fetched after SGA lost $85,000 a couple years ago.)
And my degree would go to waste either way.
If Babson improves, that’s great for the future students. But I sure as hell didn’t come to the #1 entrepreneurial school in the country with the ultimate goal of getting “a better job.”
in response to babson’s number #1 fan…
when crapmaster spits, when it’s not hot fire, it’s the straight truth. both coincidentally hurt like hell. and is it ridiculous? hell yes.
but it’s a testament to how poorly babson has done. don’t tell me our site doesn’t get read. you read it. i’ve been writing here for a while. largely because of this site i know now that i am not the only one that has been quite disappointed by babson’s performance. in an odd, roundabout way, responses just like crapmaster’s, is really the only reason i would ever consider donating to babson. this site exists, the administration reads it and listens to it, that’s a fine quality of babson and one that i commend the administration on. i would donate money to fund a permanent crapcampus pr responder.
are we wasting our degree? perhaps. some might say we are gambling with it, some might say there was nothing to waste to begin with. in my mind, we have two options… 1: say nothing, pray shit gets better. or option 2: demand improvement. if we can make babson a better school, then fuck, i’ll grab my balls and say it. i want a more reputable school that i can brag about, not have to explain where it’s located. and anyway, i just happen to think that this site has improved babson. but that’s just my opinion.
and if this whole place goes up in flames, then so be it. i have a feeling that crapmaster and the other writers here would be well prepared to succeed in a job market regardless. i mean, blame the students because the school belly flopped the 90s? how silly. we’re paying customers, after all. (and don’t forget who implemented that sort of culture.) the fact that babson failed to convince these students to donate is not the student’s fault, it’s babson’s fault. i mean, they admitted them in the first place, right? they were willing to take their money for tuition, right? do you blame the consumer or respond to the customer’s needs?
sometimes, your position seems ridiculous to me. but i don’t blame you. because you probably graduated thousands of years ago and have no idea about the current, up to date babson. behind all that glittery pr. i mean, did you miss the chappelle reference or not?
i really am thankful that you posted your opinion, but i just want you to take a second and look at what these people are saying before you are so quick to dismiss their stance. maybe they know something you don’t.
Babson’s #1 Fan…you obviously didn’t comprehend the post and comments thread. The reason I say this is because you’re still under the false assumption that your degree is really worth that much. Try and follow the logic here. First of all, if Babson goes down in flames, it won’t be on any of our watches, it will be future students that we’ve already warned that didn’t feel like listening and went there anyway, so they deserve it. Second, if we’ve already graduated recently, then we have jobs (well, most do, but let’s face it, with the training you have at Babson if you’re jobless a couple years out of college it’s either by choice or else the quality of your degree isn’t what is holding you back). And after you’ve worked in the real world for a little bit, I think your next employer would care about your success and experience and probably grad school or other additional education more than they would your undergrad degree. When you’re 40 and in a mid-life crisis because you missed out on what your friends claim was the best 4 years of their lives, I would hope and expect that employers are not still relying on a degree you got 20 years prior. Therefore, what happens to Babson after you graduate really doesn’t do dick to you personally in the long run.
In fact, if you’re planning on going to grad school and/or getting your CPA or CFA, those achievements all make your Babson degree obsolete. So you can’t make an already worthless degree any more worthless.
What I’m trying to say is that for some reason you believe that donating and making Babson the best school in the world will benefit you, or that not donating and making Babson completely fall apart will hurt you. Neither is true, despite what Babson might have you believe. I would also like to insert the fact that outside the northeast, nobody has even heard of Babson. So I don’t think a degree from a place no one has heard of could be considered worthwhile, it’s all about how you present yourself. Just ask the many Babson students that smoke Harvard grads in the i-banking interviews. Based on degree alone, Harvard should win hands-down. But it’s the people that make their futures happen. So don’t blame the (lack of) quality in Babson’s degree when you can’t get a job, blame yourself. Likewise, if you do get a quality job, don’t think it’s because Barefoot took a dump on a piece of paper and gave it to you, it’s because you earned it. Which is my point exactly. Your degree is a piece of paper, it means dick. What you learned (or didn’t) is what will help you in the real world because with maybe an exception for your first real job out of school, it’s YOUR reputation that companies will look for, not the reputation of where you went to school back in the day.