January 07, 2019 Monday
Bedtime Story
The Big League
Sports and athletics still play a
significant role among the Ivy League schools with serious championships being
organized among the varsity teams each year.
The rivalries among the teams of different
varsities run deep and long in almost all the 16 recognized sports that range
from rugby to ice hockey to rowing and basketball.
There is so much emotional attachment to
these games that the final of some of the championship are akin to Super Bowl
of the National Football League.
The Yale-Princeton rivalry is football is
so much nationally renowned that the finals played between them are actually
highly profitable to both the universities.
The academic elitism of the Ivy League is
best demonstrated by their acceptance rates which tend to be 10% or lesser in
general and hovering around 5% for Harvard, Princeton and Colombia.
Not many will be aware that most of the
universities are very old seven of them being established just after the
American Civil War that ended in 1865.
These eight universities would be a
tremendous influence that would come up in the nation and would set an example
for all.
What makes the Ivy League maintain their
world class standards in their academic programs and research is their
astronomical financial endowments or the monetary donations that they receive
from their federal and state governments.
This is in spite of the fact that they are
totally private universities.
Private individuals who have succeeded
monetarily also end up making substantial contributions.
The highest annual endowment that is held
by any American university is that of 37.1 billion dollars and it is held by
Harvard.
I don’t think it is easy for an average ape
to grasp the value of this amount so let me express me in terms that will
perhaps be more meaningful in expressing its colossal magnitude.
Assume you are a well-to-do ophthalmologist
in the United States who is able to save 100,000 USD every year (which is a
highly possible event).
Then it would take you 370,000 years to
save the amount that Harvard gets as an endowment every year.
370,000 years is on average equal to 4625
lives assuming that you would live up to 80 and would be earning and saving
this amount from the year you are born to the year of your death.
There is yet another way of looking at this
giant figure.
Suppose you are even more successful person
than an American ophthalmologist, say one of the drug lords of the Cali Cartel,
and you are saving 10,000 USD per day (that is equivalent to an annual savings
of 3,650,000 USD per year)!
It would then still take you 10,137 years
to save this amount again assuming this will happen from day 1 to your demise.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer
and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment