For Indiana University business grads, a tough final lesson
Those who failed to pick up tickets for ceremony now face black-market prices.

 Excerpt:

“I can’t believe it. It’s absolutely distressing,” said Beatty, a senior from Fishers who missed the pickup time for free graduation tickets for herself and her parents last month and now faces paying several hundred dollars to attend the ceremony in the auditorium on the Bloomington campus.

“My parents spent $70,000 to send me here the last four years, and they won’t be able to attend,” she said Wednesday. “It’s really opened my eyes about Kelley students. What have we been taught here? Why are my fellow Kelley classmates charging me extortion rates?”

From DSC:
I can’t comment on Beatty or the other students who didn’t take immediate action to acquire their tickets to the event (perhaps that’s one lesson to be learned here).  But more troubling to me were the reflections I had after reading this article:

  • What lessons did these soon-to-be graduates really learn here? It seems that these students have learned to make a buck in whatever way they can.  After all, that’s capitalism, right? (But capitalism without true stewardship, values, leadership, and caring about others can be destructive — as we are witnessing and experiencing these days within the United States…and most likely within higher ed as well.)
  • What was modeled by IU? Were the “customers” treated right after spending tens of thousands of dollars at IU? What are the rest of us doing along these lines within higher ed?

Which got me to thinking…what are the motivations of today’s graduates as they enter the workplace? What are their goals in life? What are institutions of higher ed really teaching and modeling about such goals? 

Which got me to thinking…what are the states of their hearts? Our hearts? 

Deep thoughts from just a graduation event…
but the streams we swim in run deep and
we don’t have know how powerful they really
are until we try swimming upstream.

Daniel