Professor what you describe is a closed economy, you got taxpayers dollars, student dollars, and alumni dollars and prices will rise to meet the available funds. Leave no dollar unused. 💰💲💰
But if you think your gowns are expensive you should see what The Church and its suppliers charge my brother, who is a priest, for his vestments…
I'm in Rome right now, and yesterday I passed the Catholic store where my brother (a Deacon) bought some garb when he visited me here last year. The prices were eye-watering for some simple seasonal stoles. He bought 4, but heck he's a lawyer. I can't imagine what the robes run. I wonder whether there are Temu knockoffs?
I'm a total stolen-valor academic. I've been a volunteer commencement Marshal for 63 ceremonies, and now I'm both that and a paid name-reader.
BUT I have no PhD; Masters is the terminal degree in my discipline. So they give me a doctorate robe to wear, the funny tam hat, and a PhD hood that is the default hood colors for this university.
I do love commencement. I get it all the garb rent-free, and get paid a lot of money for a few hours of fun "work" (I would do it for free), and it's the happiest day of the year. I do feel bad about the racket. I had no idea what that shit cost!
Your school *pays* name-readers??!! Our admin simply goes to the Comm/ Broadcast faculty who regard it as an honor ( which it kinda is).
Speaking of stolen valor, I have a colleague who has been wearing a Hogwarts Gryffindor robe to graduation since she arrived 15 years ago. She added a tam and nobody has said a word.
It is a huge honor. I think they pay me because there are two of us at each ceremony (we alternate reading names as students climb up the stage from both sides; about a name every three seconds), and the other reader is a radio personality who is the "voice" of my university. He's not otherwise a university employee. So, they pay me same as him.
I recently completed a mid-life crisis PhD (I have 5 grandchildren) and I ended up with two tams! I rented the gown and hood for $150 and was told I had to buy the tam for $130. For some reason, though, Herff Jones included a tam in the bag with my gown along with “my” tam separately in a box. When I returned the rental gown and hood, the extra tam was still in the bag. The guy at the desk said, “Don’t you want your tam?” I told him I kept the boxed tam at home and this one was extra. He said, “Do you want two? We have to throw them away.” “Sure!” I said. Apparently once this $130 floppy hat touches a graduate’s head, it is forever unclean. My wife says we can let the grandkids use it for dress up.
The "approved vendor" thing is the bane of my life as department chair. The way it works at my university is that most purchases come out of our "Other Than Personnel Services" departmental budget, which is fixed at the start of the year, so spending excess amounts on things through the "approved vendor" system means that we can't afford other things that we might want to buy.
My assumption is that the "approved vendor" system is imposed on universities by financial auditors: the fear is that, if you leave professors to choose their own suppliers, then it leaves openings for corruption (e.g. I buy supplies from my sleazy uncle who marks it up and then gives me a cut of the profits). And "approved vendors" definitely stops people skimming off the university's money to their sleazy uncles! But the problem is that it effectively creates monopoly suppliers who can charge excessive amounts, and, on the assumption that in practice few professors are planning to channel money to their sleazy uncles, a lot more money is wasted perfectly legally than would be lost through corruption.
At least at my university, it is possible to appeal to the finance people to bypass the "approved vendor" system, if you can produce paperwork to demonstrate the cost savings: I've done that with catering, where I got permission to simply order in pizza from a local delivery service for department events rather than buying sandwiches from the "approved caterer": so we spend around $200 on pizza for 20 people rather than $800 (literally!) to buy around 35 (not very good) sandwiches. But it is only worth doing that for relatively big purchases: with the weekly purchases of stationary etc. it would be too time-consuming for something which would only save a few dollars each time.
I skipped my PhD ceremony to take the family to the beach and, when I landed that TT job, I purchased my “regalia” used on eBay. Like you, I had no concerns about the colors matching my discipline or awarding institution, but I do look mahvelous (because the outfit makes 97% of me invisible; 98 when I’m wearing sunglasses).
Regarding those student fees, don’t forget that photographer with privileged access to the ceremony who will later tell the graduates that they may have a digital copy - not a physical print - of their big moment for a mere $60. I think it’s shameful that my institution cannot spring for that small gesture.
Another instance of the older generations pulling up the ladder bwhind then: as a student inasked how they afford the $1500 regalia, and mentors told me they just used their start up funds. When later i got tenure track jobs with start up funds, they told me it could no longer be used towards those work-related items.
I'm not sure this is entirely true, or at least entirely true everywhere. When I did my first master's degree, I was able to order it from any vendor I wanted, as long as it complied with Harvard Divinity School's rules. I've been alternatively embarrassed and reassured by the doctoral bars (the M.Div. being a terminal degree). My final degree was from a British institution, and they have much different costumes over there. The point is that I've been to any number of graduations, ordinations, and other ceremonies where my robe was required, and no one has ever had anything to say about which robe I wore. I've worn my undergrad hood with my M.Div. kit, my M.Div. hood with my PhD kit, etc., etc. Nobody cares.
Also, my doctoral robe from Southampton cost me, I think, GBP 125, at the time about $150. I could have just used my M.Div. gown, but I wanted the cool Harry Potter-type academic gown. Again, no one cares.
Sorry but the cost of the gown is tiny compared with the cost of the degree. A hundred or so in "Commencement Fees" for the undergrads, vs several hundred thousand in tuition, student service fees, and room and board? And from a faculty perspective, I can't relate to what you are saying here. At the three universities where I have worked, we always had the option of "borrowed" regalia, free of charge. It's usually the standard black robe with the hood of your grad school and degree, or at the very least the hood of the school where you work. And if you buy, which I eventually did (after about 10 years of using the borrowed stuff), well I have never been told that there i only one vendor. Wondering what kind of school does that. Fifteen years ago I sprang for my own regalia, bought from a third party for about $600, and have worn it every one of the last 15 years, with anticipated wearing for another five. So this will come to $30 per year. I spend more on vodka.
Also, you don't just pick a color. You either go with standard black, which is actually the color of many schools, or you get your school colors. The shades of red, blue, green, purple, orange, brown, and whatever, are not fashion choices. They represent universities.
If you want to write an article taking down the paegentry and symbolism, go ahead. If you want to write an article about the cheap piece or acetate or poly-whatnot that many undergrads let turn to dust in their parents' closet, go ahead. But the idea that this adds ANY significant cost to the degree itself is just not accurate
It may be "free of charge" to you as faculty, but someone pays — students are the ones funding these budgets through tuition and taxes. That's the point.
And that it "is tiny compared with the cost of the degree" is exactly how every one of these costs gets justified. The access code is tiny, the proctoring fee is tiny, the parking is tiny, the meal plan markup is tiny ... They're all tiny. But they all add up. And at every stage, someone is saying "well, compared to the degree itself, it's nothing" — which is exactly how a parasitic vendor economy sustains itself. Nobody questions any single cost because each one is small enough to wave away.
And re: "I spend more on vodka," a tenured professor's disposable income isn't the benchmark. The piece is about students for whom $100 means going without groceries.
Not tenured, but whatever. So the $600 I spent sixteen years ago contributes to lowering the cost for the students. Maybe all faculty should do that then.
And to that racket add the cost of union labor. At my state school, you are technically not allowed to hang anything from the wall yourself. Instead, you are supposed to ask the Facilities Department to do it for you. This is both inconvenient (they will take their sweet time; once we had sewer gas stinking up a whole area, and the facilities people told us that three cleaning requests had to be made before a plumber could look at the problem) and expensive. When my department was moved to a new building, a colleague dared to paint one of the walls of his office red. He thought he was going to lose his job; the union accused him of "stealing" labor and made him pay hundreds to repaint the wall. My solution was to show up with a drill and a level on a Saturday afternoon during summer break. My husband and I hung shelves, wall pockets, a whiteboard, and a corkboard in the common area. When the term resumed months later, I kept silent about my mischief. As a result, we are the only department on the whole floor with a large corkboard where we can post announcements.
When they moved us to the new building, they gave us all new shitty particleboard furniture that was way oversized for our tiny offices. Of course, nobody consulted the faculty about these purchases. They just went to a state-approved vendor and purchased thousands of dollars of unusable furniture. Within a few weeks of moving in, many faculty had pushed the furniture into the hallway and brought their own furniture from home.
President Reagan addressed our Notre Dame Commencement in 1981. He had been shot only weeks before.
Normally, the honoree who delivers thee Commencement Address personally shakes the hand of each graduating doctoral candidate, but security prevented it on that day.
The campus and surrounding parking lots swarmed with anti-Reagan demonstrators - thousands of them. When Obama appeared 28 years later, pro-life demonstrators were forbidden, and a defiant 28 were arrested. Campus police brought Obama in a back way to avoide his being offended by such miscreants.
Somehow, I saw that coming in 1981. Although I was baptized at Notre Dame's Sacred Heart Church 80 years ago and had received my BA and MA there, the thrill was gone.
I sat in the bleachers and asked that they mail me my diploma.
I love reading your articles. They remind me why getting out of academic medicine 30 years ago was the best decision I ever made.
Professor what you describe is a closed economy, you got taxpayers dollars, student dollars, and alumni dollars and prices will rise to meet the available funds. Leave no dollar unused. 💰💲💰
But if you think your gowns are expensive you should see what The Church and its suppliers charge my brother, who is a priest, for his vestments…
I'm in Rome right now, and yesterday I passed the Catholic store where my brother (a Deacon) bought some garb when he visited me here last year. The prices were eye-watering for some simple seasonal stoles. He bought 4, but heck he's a lawyer. I can't imagine what the robes run. I wonder whether there are Temu knockoffs?
I'm a total stolen-valor academic. I've been a volunteer commencement Marshal for 63 ceremonies, and now I'm both that and a paid name-reader.
BUT I have no PhD; Masters is the terminal degree in my discipline. So they give me a doctorate robe to wear, the funny tam hat, and a PhD hood that is the default hood colors for this university.
I do love commencement. I get it all the garb rent-free, and get paid a lot of money for a few hours of fun "work" (I would do it for free), and it's the happiest day of the year. I do feel bad about the racket. I had no idea what that shit cost!
Your school *pays* name-readers??!! Our admin simply goes to the Comm/ Broadcast faculty who regard it as an honor ( which it kinda is).
Speaking of stolen valor, I have a colleague who has been wearing a Hogwarts Gryffindor robe to graduation since she arrived 15 years ago. She added a tam and nobody has said a word.
It is a huge honor. I think they pay me because there are two of us at each ceremony (we alternate reading names as students climb up the stage from both sides; about a name every three seconds), and the other reader is a radio personality who is the "voice" of my university. He's not otherwise a university employee. So, they pay me same as him.
I teach nursing, and the specialty charges (looking at you, ATI) are obscene. I'm sure every discipline has its own version of this. Bananas.
I recently completed a mid-life crisis PhD (I have 5 grandchildren) and I ended up with two tams! I rented the gown and hood for $150 and was told I had to buy the tam for $130. For some reason, though, Herff Jones included a tam in the bag with my gown along with “my” tam separately in a box. When I returned the rental gown and hood, the extra tam was still in the bag. The guy at the desk said, “Don’t you want your tam?” I told him I kept the boxed tam at home and this one was extra. He said, “Do you want two? We have to throw them away.” “Sure!” I said. Apparently once this $130 floppy hat touches a graduate’s head, it is forever unclean. My wife says we can let the grandkids use it for dress up.
The "approved vendor" thing is the bane of my life as department chair. The way it works at my university is that most purchases come out of our "Other Than Personnel Services" departmental budget, which is fixed at the start of the year, so spending excess amounts on things through the "approved vendor" system means that we can't afford other things that we might want to buy.
My assumption is that the "approved vendor" system is imposed on universities by financial auditors: the fear is that, if you leave professors to choose their own suppliers, then it leaves openings for corruption (e.g. I buy supplies from my sleazy uncle who marks it up and then gives me a cut of the profits). And "approved vendors" definitely stops people skimming off the university's money to their sleazy uncles! But the problem is that it effectively creates monopoly suppliers who can charge excessive amounts, and, on the assumption that in practice few professors are planning to channel money to their sleazy uncles, a lot more money is wasted perfectly legally than would be lost through corruption.
At least at my university, it is possible to appeal to the finance people to bypass the "approved vendor" system, if you can produce paperwork to demonstrate the cost savings: I've done that with catering, where I got permission to simply order in pizza from a local delivery service for department events rather than buying sandwiches from the "approved caterer": so we spend around $200 on pizza for 20 people rather than $800 (literally!) to buy around 35 (not very good) sandwiches. But it is only worth doing that for relatively big purchases: with the weekly purchases of stationary etc. it would be too time-consuming for something which would only save a few dollars each time.
I skipped my PhD ceremony to take the family to the beach and, when I landed that TT job, I purchased my “regalia” used on eBay. Like you, I had no concerns about the colors matching my discipline or awarding institution, but I do look mahvelous (because the outfit makes 97% of me invisible; 98 when I’m wearing sunglasses).
Regarding those student fees, don’t forget that photographer with privileged access to the ceremony who will later tell the graduates that they may have a digital copy - not a physical print - of their big moment for a mere $60. I think it’s shameful that my institution cannot spring for that small gesture.
Huh....I wondered about the professor in the cowboy hat at my son's graduation. And many wore tennis shoes!
Just another day at the (comfy) office.
Another instance of the older generations pulling up the ladder bwhind then: as a student inasked how they afford the $1500 regalia, and mentors told me they just used their start up funds. When later i got tenure track jobs with start up funds, they told me it could no longer be used towards those work-related items.
They are now for sale on Amazon full in color setup for $299 from Cappe Diem. Our whole PhD cohort purchased them there.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/CappeDiem/page/F70A5181-FF9E-4FD2-91A7-10CBE7F44C6C
I'm not sure this is entirely true, or at least entirely true everywhere. When I did my first master's degree, I was able to order it from any vendor I wanted, as long as it complied with Harvard Divinity School's rules. I've been alternatively embarrassed and reassured by the doctoral bars (the M.Div. being a terminal degree). My final degree was from a British institution, and they have much different costumes over there. The point is that I've been to any number of graduations, ordinations, and other ceremonies where my robe was required, and no one has ever had anything to say about which robe I wore. I've worn my undergrad hood with my M.Div. kit, my M.Div. hood with my PhD kit, etc., etc. Nobody cares.
Also, my doctoral robe from Southampton cost me, I think, GBP 125, at the time about $150. I could have just used my M.Div. gown, but I wanted the cool Harry Potter-type academic gown. Again, no one cares.
Sorry but the cost of the gown is tiny compared with the cost of the degree. A hundred or so in "Commencement Fees" for the undergrads, vs several hundred thousand in tuition, student service fees, and room and board? And from a faculty perspective, I can't relate to what you are saying here. At the three universities where I have worked, we always had the option of "borrowed" regalia, free of charge. It's usually the standard black robe with the hood of your grad school and degree, or at the very least the hood of the school where you work. And if you buy, which I eventually did (after about 10 years of using the borrowed stuff), well I have never been told that there i only one vendor. Wondering what kind of school does that. Fifteen years ago I sprang for my own regalia, bought from a third party for about $600, and have worn it every one of the last 15 years, with anticipated wearing for another five. So this will come to $30 per year. I spend more on vodka.
Also, you don't just pick a color. You either go with standard black, which is actually the color of many schools, or you get your school colors. The shades of red, blue, green, purple, orange, brown, and whatever, are not fashion choices. They represent universities.
If you want to write an article taking down the paegentry and symbolism, go ahead. If you want to write an article about the cheap piece or acetate or poly-whatnot that many undergrads let turn to dust in their parents' closet, go ahead. But the idea that this adds ANY significant cost to the degree itself is just not accurate
It may be "free of charge" to you as faculty, but someone pays — students are the ones funding these budgets through tuition and taxes. That's the point.
And that it "is tiny compared with the cost of the degree" is exactly how every one of these costs gets justified. The access code is tiny, the proctoring fee is tiny, the parking is tiny, the meal plan markup is tiny ... They're all tiny. But they all add up. And at every stage, someone is saying "well, compared to the degree itself, it's nothing" — which is exactly how a parasitic vendor economy sustains itself. Nobody questions any single cost because each one is small enough to wave away.
And re: "I spend more on vodka," a tenured professor's disposable income isn't the benchmark. The piece is about students for whom $100 means going without groceries.
Not tenured, but whatever. So the $600 I spent sixteen years ago contributes to lowering the cost for the students. Maybe all faculty should do that then.
And to that racket add the cost of union labor. At my state school, you are technically not allowed to hang anything from the wall yourself. Instead, you are supposed to ask the Facilities Department to do it for you. This is both inconvenient (they will take their sweet time; once we had sewer gas stinking up a whole area, and the facilities people told us that three cleaning requests had to be made before a plumber could look at the problem) and expensive. When my department was moved to a new building, a colleague dared to paint one of the walls of his office red. He thought he was going to lose his job; the union accused him of "stealing" labor and made him pay hundreds to repaint the wall. My solution was to show up with a drill and a level on a Saturday afternoon during summer break. My husband and I hung shelves, wall pockets, a whiteboard, and a corkboard in the common area. When the term resumed months later, I kept silent about my mischief. As a result, we are the only department on the whole floor with a large corkboard where we can post announcements.
When they moved us to the new building, they gave us all new shitty particleboard furniture that was way oversized for our tiny offices. Of course, nobody consulted the faculty about these purchases. They just went to a state-approved vendor and purchased thousands of dollars of unusable furniture. Within a few weeks of moving in, many faculty had pushed the furniture into the hallway and brought their own furniture from home.
President Reagan addressed our Notre Dame Commencement in 1981. He had been shot only weeks before.
Normally, the honoree who delivers thee Commencement Address personally shakes the hand of each graduating doctoral candidate, but security prevented it on that day.
The campus and surrounding parking lots swarmed with anti-Reagan demonstrators - thousands of them. When Obama appeared 28 years later, pro-life demonstrators were forbidden, and a defiant 28 were arrested. Campus police brought Obama in a back way to avoide his being offended by such miscreants.
Somehow, I saw that coming in 1981. Although I was baptized at Notre Dame's Sacred Heart Church 80 years ago and had received my BA and MA there, the thrill was gone.
I sat in the bleachers and asked that they mail me my diploma.
They did.