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Slouching Toward A Global University: The Enlightenment 2.0
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Opening of the 2009-2010 Academic Year, Nanjing Campus
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NYIT 2009 State-of-the-Institution Address: Transformation Revealed
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Salute to the Class of 2009, Amman
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Salute to the Class of 2009, Abu Dhabi
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Salute to the Class of 2009, Bahrain
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Salute to the Class of 2009, NYCOM
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Salute to the Class of 2009, New York: Celebrating Knowledge Capital
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A Welcome to the U.S. Secretary of Education
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Opening of the 2008-2009 Academic Year, Nanjing Campus
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Universities and Technology: Models and Experiences of Innovation in the Education Process
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Renewable Energy Energy-Efficiency: Designing and Implementing Sustainable Energy Projects
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NYIT State-of-the-Institution Address
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Welcome Address at NYIT's International Water Conference at the United Nations
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Banishing Barriers and Borders: 21st-Century Classroom Technology and the Changing Face of Students and Professors
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Salute to the Class of 2008, Abu Dhabi
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Salute to the Class of 2008, Jordan
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Salute to the Class of 2008, Bahrain
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Salute to the Class of 2008, New York
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A Conversation about Educational Globalization
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Salute to the Class of 2009, New York: Celebrating Knowledge Capital
05/17/2009
Good morning. Good morning and welcome. What a wonderful day. It's a great pleasure to see all of you here.
You are quite a group. During the course of 2009, four thousand, four hundred and fifty students will graduate from New York Institute of Technology. About half will earn bachelor's degrees, and the other half graduate degrees through the doctorate. Today we have two thousand of those graduates with us, and with family and other loved ones, we are some ten thousand gathered here to celebrate academic success. As I said … quite a group.
You have come here from around the corner and around the globe. You traveled from The Bronx and Bahrain, from Astoria and Amman, Nesconset and Nanchang. Today we are graduating students from fifty states and seventy five nations.
First things first: Graduates, congratulations for earning -- not for just getting -- but for earning your degrees from NYIT. You know how much it took -- and so do I. And, I am sure, so will colleagues and employers who will value your accomplishments in the future as much as we value your accomplishments today. Congratulations.
Here among you are many success stories from this past year and years at NYIT. And we will celebrate some of them this morning. Every NYIT e-newsletter we issue is filled with splendid accomplishments that make us proud of New York Institute of Technology and our students, faculty, staff, community members and, of course, our graduates.
Right now, I would like to celebrate one member of the NYIT community. For thirty-eight years, he has been a member of the NYIT faculty and for the past seventeen, served as the Dean of the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences. What an accomplishment. He has earned our respect and the right to retire as dean-but not yet professor! We are the NYIT we are today in part due to his many accomplishments. So, on behalf of our 15,000 students, two-thousand members of the faculty and staff, and after today, eighty-one thousand, five hundred alumni, thank you now Dean Emeritus Dr. Heskia Heskiaoff. Will you please stand and be recognized.
Many speakers get up in front of graduates and, with suitable dramatic gestures and exclamation points, urge them to Go forth! As in, Go forth and cure cancer! Go forth and bring about world peace! Go forth and do lunch! Anything, it's clear, will do. Telling you to go forth does not, it seems to me, make a lot of sense.
You're going forth anyway.
As you know all too well, the world out there that will consume all of us for the coming years has some significant social and environmental problems and now is in a deep recession. Our nation -- indeed, the world -- is in an economic crisis. Domestically, we are in what the newspapers call "the fastest slide in 50 years," with major corporations going bankrupt, manufacturing plants in numerous industries being shut, retail stores closing, and widespread debt growing. It will pass.
When you look back on this graduation ceremony from a perspective of ten, twenty, thirty, perhaps even fifty years, you will talk about it the way people do the recession of the 1970s or even the Great Depression of the 1930s. And, hopefully, you will do it from a comfortable desk or armchair that signifies your security and accomplishments. Just this week amid all the media reminders of the economic downturns in the 1970s and 80s, my wife and I tested our memory of how these affected us. We could barely come up with a response. We lived through them. Chronologically, they weren't all that long ago and we have vivid memories from those times, just not wedded to the economic conditions because it was for us in many ways a different world then and we were different people ... our earlier selves. It is the past.
There are new and exciting opportunities for you in the world you are entering. Even as we are here together today, that world is changing, and it's doing so at a faster pace than ever before. It's taking place in such areas as technology, medicine, biology, the environment, governmental affairs, and world affairs. Opportunities abound. Fifty years ago, before we commonly spoke of globalization or the information economy or of multinational corporations, Winston Churchill foresaw that "the empires of the future are the empires of the mind." He foresaw today.
We have tried, my colleagues and I at NYIT, to provide you with the tools with which to meet the future, take part in the future, whatever variations of it may come to pass.
We have offered graduate and undergraduate courses in Business Administration, Management and Entrepreneurship -- to teach you how to run things. We have offered courses in Psychology, Communication, English and Advertising -- to teach you how to understand things, say things, sell things. We have offered courses in Design and Engineering -- to help you build things.
Technology? We have offered courses in many, many aspects of technology and life sciences as well as medicine, to help prepare you for careers -- and contributions -- in these fields as well. We hope we have offered you knowledge, too.
Some months ago, then U.S. Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, speaking at our Abu Dhabi campus said: "Knowledge has become the single most valuable currency in this changing world. And education continues to be the surest path to opportunity and prosperity. It is not a panacea but a necessary foundation upon which progress is built."
Yes. Today, as we join together to celebrate your achievements, there is a new world unfolding. Its chief currency is not cash nor credit, but knowledge -- what we have come to call knowledge capital. We at NYIT have done our best to provide you with this currency. I put the question to you now to ponder: how will you spend it?
We cannot imagine, we cannot dream, we cannot invent without knowledge. We cannot be ourselves, let alone our future selves. Because the future empire of the mind will be a different one from today's.
I am confident, however, that the knowledge you have acquired so far in your lives will prepare you for the knowledge you will need next year … or in ten years or in forty. What we know today is not constant. Some things we know will remain true. But many things we know will be edited, added, footnoted, paraphrased, or simply deleted. You know that "delete" button? I think you have the preparation to be agile and adapt to new knowledge. NYIT has let you know loud and clear how important interdisciplinary study and innovative thinking are and will be to your education and future.
Because you will have to absorb ideas from every continent and source, it is important to remember that globalization is not only about trade and finance. The globalization of ideas touches us and the rest of our six and a half billion neighbors on earth.
All right. Let's acknowledge today's America is currently suffering an 8.9 percent unemployment rate. Not the best news for those seeking good employment. But all of you today receive a kind of vaccine against unemployment: a diploma.
It isn't perfect, any more than the flu vaccine is perfect. But it's a big help. The current unemployment rate for college graduates in the United States is … 4.4 percent. That's less than half the national average -- and it's one third the rate for those without a high school degree.
Education pays: In fact, for each year of college, studies suggest your annual income increases by about 10 thousand dollars in today's currency. Do the math. Four years of college … forty thousand dollars a year more than a high school graduate. A master's degree: sixty thousand. Now if you choose to earn a Ph.D. and become a professor like many of your faculty on this stage, that financial formula breaks down, but the rewards are nevertheless rich. For one thing, we get to dress up in these fancy robes.
Of course, your diploma will do more than just get you a job … or a better job … or a raise. It will be a fulcrum for your whole life. Without it, you'll always lack leverage. With it, you can move parts of the world.
As a graduate you will also be healthier, happier, and longer-lived. You'll buy more wisely and manage your property better. Your children will get a better education. Your diploma also has value to those around you. It helps you contribute to society through your daily activities and beyond.
Your diploma matters because knowledge capital matters. Think of knowledge capital as a compass that points toward solutions. It is deep information. It's also a treasure that becomes a part of you. It not only resists inflation but -- with a little upkeep -- it consistently gains in value.
It is fairly scarce. Almost two-thirds of U.S. citizens have never set foot in college. No one would ever dream of asking them to design a building or cure a person's illness. But they would ask many of you. You have knowledge capital.
Knowledge capital helps you adapt to change, swiftly and well. In the Middle Ages, everyone panicked when they saw a solar eclipse. They didn't know what to do. Today we do know what to do: Nothing. Or simply marvel at its wonder. Knowledge capital reduces fear and gives us control. The world runs on it.
NYIT has given you the knowledge capital and the mental tools to handle change. You have learned to use and value technology, and, of course, technology has remade the planet.
Ten years ago, no one ever capitalized the words Google or Twitter -- no one even knew what they were. We live in a Golden Age of communications, and it keeps getting better. On days like today our world seems to me about the size of a globe of fruit we try to hold in our hands.
For life in that ever-changing brave and perhaps tasty new world, let me offer you encouragement again with an historical eye in even more direct terms: the economy will improve. Every time it sinks, we hear graphic descriptions of the moonscape ahead. Back in 1974 some investors were saying they'd never buy stocks again, while some utilities and governments seemed ready to collapse.
Just like now.
And what goes down generally must come up. You can think of the economy as a sine wave, with crest after trough after crest. But these crests are usually long and the troughs are brief. And countless factors perturb the line, so every crest and trough looks different. Yet the key fact remains: Down leads to up.
The seeds of the upswing are already there, including in developing nations that will help us grow the American economy. You yourselves, armed with the knowledge and tools you have gained at NYIT, may create other seeds. Troughs are unstable and full of flux. Andrew Carnegie started his steel company in a recession, when he could buy supplies cheaply. Microsoft, Genentech, Southwest Airlines -- all began in downturns. As economist Paul Romer has said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."
Downturns clear away the unprepared and make room for new ideas. And they lead to structural change. Already, the Wall Street of a year ago is a memory, the auto industry is in a metamorphosis, and the push to new forms of energy is unstoppable.
Out there, the empires of the future are opening up. You can enter them now and grow with them. That's one of the big secrets of Bill Gates's success. He was there at the very beginning of personal computers. He worked in the tiny Albuquerque company that first programmed them. And he never let go.
Health care and education -- which focus on the world's older citizens and the younger ones -- are also doing well. The latest labor statistics reveal they both gained jobs, and the current U.S. budget will help them further, by expanding health coverage and college loan programs.
And as the current trough disappears into the past, analysts say there will actually be a shortage of white-collar workers. Baby Boomers will retire and we won't have enough professionals to replace them. In the end, your challenge may be not finding work, but finding enough people to work for you.
Finally, let me conclude by sharing the simplest of advice, but hardly simple-minded ideas: What I wish for each of you is … - the confidence to embrace new ideas and people,
- the willingness to learn from your mistakes,
- a lifetime of learning and openness to the world,
- and, most important of all, a disposition to speak gently … to love much … to laugh often … to give freely … to pay promptly … and to be kind.
Congratulations and best wishes to the class of 2009. Make us all proud.
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