Yale Daily News

Yale's decision to put construction projects on hold has had a devastating effect on architecture and construction firms in and around New Haven. Firms are closing or laying off people. Yale clearly has missed the opportunity to act responsibly and support the New Haven area in times like these.

Architect, you are absolutely correct. However, Yale can afford to wait a year or two as prices collapse, and as contractors and architects struggle for business. Then they can build their new buildings at a fraction of the cost that they would have paid if they had gone forward this year. That is what happened in the 1930s, when Yale's campus was largely built.

The recession will have longstanding impacts, notably, the emptying out of the suburbs and the virtual end to private automobiles as transit (they will be too expensive for almost anyone, as they already are to vast segments of the population). The city and Yale should be taking proactive steps now to expand transit, cycling and walking in the center city. Unfortunately, all I see are a lot of new parking garages still under construction. Very bad decisions were made by someone. But in the end, cities will benefit from a tide of reinvestment and increasing urban densities, and Yale will benefit due to the nature of its preeminent position among world universities.

Students looking for work should consider banding together and purchasing a foreclosed house or two in Cleveland or Detroit for $100. They can spend the next year fixing up the properties, working locally, growing their own food, and eventually selling the houses at a profit. Cleveland and Detroit are perfectly fine cities.

I believe my interview was warped in this article. I spent more time talking about my small business (thecampuskings.com), a college shoe apparel company than my Light Fellowship.

I feel used.

I fully accept that the endowment was down 25% last fall, and has been on a rocky course since, but the price of stocks has soared since March and commercial real estate values are not down anything like 25%. So I'm skeptical that it's STILL down 25%. If so, then someone's asleep. (Highly unlikely!) If not, then it's being used as a fundraising pitch but unjustifiably so. Concerning the other cutbacks, businesses often use these periods to prune what they think they can do without, knowing that few will challenge given the overall context. That may be happening here as well. The primary protection for workers is their union, as always.

Yale's decision to freeze hiring and stop constructions has clearly resulted in unemployment for many in the New Haven community. This is especially tough for us graduate students with children. Why? Because we earn little, and therefore heavily rely on our spouses earnings to feed the family. Also, we are tied to Yale and cannot easily leave New Haven in the midst of a PhD program. With the spouses loosing their jobs now, our families have difficulties surviving. Thus, with the current answer to the recession, Yale is hurting one of its most vulnerable segments the most!

Actually, to play devil's advocate, I think Yale has done an excellent job protecting its grad students, even increasing our stipends for next year despite the downtown. It's not really fair to complain that Yale should be protecting the spouses of grad students working in New Haven.

I agree with the earlier posts that it unfortunately takes a toll on New Haven job opportunities when Yale cuts back, but to suggest that they should reconsider because of a small portion of grad students with children whose spouses are affected seems kind of short-sighted.

This reminds me of 1957, when I graduated from the University of Wisconsin; the so-called Eisenhower "recession". We also had a similar situation in the mid-1970's, after the oil embargo and the escalation of oil prices. And let's not forget the very real and painful recession of the early 1980's, when I began teaching at a large community college in Illinois.
There, thousands of blue-collar workers had lost their jobs at agricultural equpment manufacturers and they were coming to us for retraining. They were "numb", angry and afraid. We worked long and hard to convince them that our economy would eventually recover and they too would manage to get back on their feet. And they did! But it took time, patience, study and, of course, taking jobs they did not really want at first. One forced retiree from Farmall (21 years service) went on to become an insurance agent and, eventually, owning his own insurance agency.
And I still recall Margo, a 40-plus year old woman, who confronted early one very cold January morning with the comment, "I'm glad I'm coming here every day; IT GIVES ME A REASON TO GET UP EVERY DAY!" That attitude helped her and many others to manage to work through the adjustments necessary to adapt to the changing economic environment. Or, as the Bible says,"This too will pass away!"
My best wishes to all those at Yale, students, faculty and staff, will manage to keep their wits about them during this trying period. A lot of humor (even gallows humor!) really helps.

Can't help but notice that, once again, little focus has been given here to specifics. Exactly what sorts of employees are being laid off at Yale, what positions have been eliminated, etc.? What we get here are anecdotal snippets.

To write about the "Recession at Yale" as thought it's a kind of a diet that results in equal weight loss across the institution is misleading. What is happening is more like selective amputation, and YDN could do a better job investigating whether there is any pattern to the cuts. How is upper management being affected, for instance?

"Professor" @#2 is spot on. Very bad decisions were, indeed made by someone --or ones-- though I doubt those are the people who have been laid off.

The suburbs will not be replaced.

The way to recovery is manufacturing. We need to keep exporting.

Manufacturing and production is ill-suited for the urban centers- too much congestion, too expensive real-estate, too many rules/regulations/permits.

Look at the South- it is surviving.

California and NY are dying.

The suburbs are positioned between the rural spaces and urban centers.

It's cheaper for individuals and businesses.

@ #2 professor: we did not go to Yale to become menial laborers and fix up houses afterwards. Because I don't know what other kind of jobs you have in mind for us that are currently available in Cleveland/Detroit. As far as that $100 house, why don't you move to the Newhallsville district of New Haven for a year (the ghetto to the Northwest) before making a suggestion like that. Because the neighborhoods those $100 houses are in will make Newhallsville look like New Canaan, CT in comparison.

@ #9: manufacturing is done more cheaply overseas except for goods requiring extremely high technical sophistication (mostly DoD type stuff) and heavy items like cars. It is one thing to maintain old factories where the fixed costs have depreciated away and another to build new factories in one of the most heavily regulated environments in the world with workers demanding high wages. For it to become viable again here we would need to sink our workers' lifestyles to the levels of Malaysian, Chinese, etc workers.

The path to success lies in continued technological sophistication and innovation, so that we continue designing the stuff made abroad and reaping disproportionate rewards from this activity. But with the sciences and engineering programs run-a-f**k at most US universities, the Asians will overtake us in a decade or two unless some radical change happens, which is unlikely.