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- <text id=92TT1277>
- <title>
- June 08, 1992: Goodbye, Eli
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- June 08, 1992 The Balkans
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 30
- SOCIETY
- Goodbye, Eli
- </hdr><body>
- <p>Yale's president bails out to join a new experimental education
- project
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.)
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-