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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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1992-09-22
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THE WEEK, Page 30SOCIETYGoodbye, Eli
Yale's president bails out to join a new experimental education
project
Tears of nostalgia filled the Old Campus as Yale's class of
1992 tossed their tassels and bounded off to bright futures. Only
later did they learn that President Benno Schmidt would be
bounding along right after them. In a surprise announcement,
Schmidt resigned his post after six troubled years to lead the
Edison Project, Christopher Whittle's bold $2.5 billion effort
to build 1,000 for-profit schools.
His news brought few tears. Schmidt's brief reign as
steward of Yale's fortunes was rocky from the start. When the
former dean of Columbia University Law School commuted between
New Haven, Conn., and home with his filmmaker wife in New York
City, Yalies jeered, "Where's Benno?" A bitter strike by
graduate-student teaching assistants and recent recommendations
for sharp cutbacks in faculty and the elimination of several
academic departments damaged campus morale. But Schmidt, 50,
managed to assuage some students by serenading them with
country-and-western tunes on his guitar and to woo some alums
with his impressive fund-raising talents; over the past two
years he raised more than $600 million.
Schmidt originally likened his swap of tenured life for
Whittle's risky project to "leaping into the abyss." But after
bringing Yale to the precipice with a projected $15 million
deficit, a scary vantage point should seem familiar. (See
related stories beginning on page 69.)