Going out with style

"Seems like only yesterday" is such cliche yet it applies in this case.

On March 31, 2016, Gaby and I visited UCLA for her first visit, where we brazenly jumped onto an admissions tour by claiming we were just early for a subsequent appointment. A year later, Gaby earned admission to UCLA, with over 100,000 applications for a class of about 8,000 for the Class of 2021. Gaby attended a four-day orientation in August, rendezvousing with Emma P. and Emma K. at the Levine's. In late September 2017, we flew with her to move into her room and start her UCLA academic journey, leaving her as we emotionally claimed our LAX Uber on Gayley Drive after three days of fall orientation.

The next four years were action-packed. Fires, earthquakes, protests, a pandemic and more. In that time we also moved twice, first from Oak Farm to Versailles, and then from Versailles to Harrison, where we built a new home. Gaby was in and out of all three addresses in this four years.

Meanwhile, the debates as to the financial value of a college degree, the cost of a college degree, the usefulness of a wide assortment of chic majors/degrees, and the source(s) for funding colleges continues unabated, yet these important issues are usually drowned out by hyperbole, anecdote, politics, and platitudes. Again rhetoric without evidence, complaint without contrastive alternatives, college degree without critical thinking, and college presidents spouting platitudes about many things, ranging from the 'real value' of a college degree, to 'love of learning,' to 'diversity, inclusion, and equity' claims.

Daily I reflect on how fortunate I was to have a solid, productive, wealth-creating career in colleges and that Jane and Gaby benefitted from and capitalized on their opportunities in college, to produce meaningful value from their studies. They both graduated without debt, with money in the bank and the market, a car, employment, and a solid foundation for the future. Few college graduates today can claim all of these outcomes, outside the children of very wealthy parents. Grandfather Italo had very little formal education and a life in coal mines. Father Ed had a college degree (first in his family) and a career in the steel industry. I have a doctorate and had a lengthy career in college, and now both daughters have a solid foundation and the chance to further the American Dream. And I thank God that college life is now behind us all.

Oldsmobile used to run an ad where they tried to appeal to a younger clientele, where they'd claim, "This is not you father's Oldsmobile!" at a time where the age of the typical Cadillac buyer was 65, and for an Oldsmobile about 55. Today, probably every college could claim, "We are not your father's (or mother's) college!" And what a shame that is. I've written several essays on the decline in respect merited by colleges, the absence of an academic mission in today's 'woke' college social experiment, and the overwhelming consumption of resources for a more and more meaningless college education. I find no joy in recognizing the painful and the obvious as to what used to be perhaps America's greatest asset -- our system of colleges -- yet what has become a giant, expensive, unproductive swamp. While much innovative scientific research has come from university research, the vast majority of faculty research -- especially in the humanities, social sciences and education -- are expensive wastes of time and, worse, often biased, non-reproduceable and invalid.

So instead allow me to wallow for a few days in joy in the accomplishments of Gaby from her five-year love affair with UCLA. And reflect on Gaby's own keen sense of self, evidenced in her November 29, 2017 and May 15, 2018 emails (below).