Stony Brook graduates are earning some of the highest salaries in the country.

Stony Brook Alumni are rolling in it.

Stony Brook University is the highest ranked SUNY campus in the 2010-2011 PayScale College Salary Report, an annual ranking of universities based on the mid-career salaries of its graduates.

This year’s report places Stony Brook 23^rd out of 374 state schools nationwide, good enough for the top seven percent.

Stony Brook graduates actually earn a bit less than their Binghamton University counterparts in their first five years of employment ($49,200 compared to $49,700). But Stony Brook’s median mid-career salary of $90,800 is higher than Binghamton’s and many other notable public universities, like the University of Michigan ($90,200), University of Texas-Austin ($87,500) and UNC-Chapel Hill ($82,900).

Compared to other universities, Stony Brook graduates have managed to weather the economic storm better than most. While Stony Brook’s ranking is down from 2008’s high mark of 18^th, we actually jumped from 24^th in 2009. In comparison, Binghamton fell from 11^th in 2008 to 36^th in 2009, then to 39^th this year.

Like the ranking, Stony Brook’s mid-career median salary was also up from last year, one of only four schools in the top 25 to grow from year to year in that category.

While the general downward trend in median salaries doesn’t come as a big shock in the current economic climate, it is sharply contrasted with rising tuition costs at many universities. Essentially, today’s college students are paying more to get degrees that are in turn earning them less.

More to come from Think Magazine when the school year begins in one month.

President Stanley joins a growing list of university presidents who have spoken out in favor of the DREAM Act

Stony Brook University President Samuel Stanley joined the growing list of university presidents and administrators calling for the passage of the DREAM Act.

In letters to Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C), President Stanley joins the presidents of the Universities of Buffalo and Rochester; Cornell, Fordham, Syracuse and New York Universities; and the chancellors of both SUNY and CUNY in calling for comprehensive immigration reform.

“We would…like to take this opportunity to affirm our strong support for federal legislation that would provide a pathway to legal residency—and remove barriers to higher education—for thousands of students who are not legal residents of this country, through no fault of their own,” reads the letter.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act enjoys broad support among lawmakers and citizens alike. A poll released earlier this summer suggests that as much as 70 percent of the country favor the provisions included in the DREAM Act.

Those provisions include the creation of a pathway to citizenship for students who were brought to the United States as children and never received proper documentation. In order to obtain legal residency, students would be required to complete some college or enlist in the military, live inside the law, and pay a fine.

Additionally, the act would give states the freedom to offer in-state tuition to undocumented students, many of whom have lived in their home states for most of their lives. An ambiguous provision in a 1996 bill sought to outlaw benefits like lower in-state tuitions for undocumented immigrants, but 11 states, including New York, passed their own legislation that offered in-state tuition to immigrants if they met certain requirements.

“We urge you to include the bipartisan 2009 DREAM Act,” says the letter, signed by President Stanley and Chancellor Zimpher. “This legislation will correct an injustice perpetuated upon thousands of American students and ultimately will benefit our country.”

Time is not on the side of supporters of the DREAM Act. The bill is currently part of a larger comprehensive immigration reform bill that is, overall, much more contentious than the DREAM Act. Unless supporters find enough allies to bring DREAM to a vote as a standalone bill, it is unlikely to pass before the November midterm elections. And if the results of those elections go as expected, it’s unlikely there will be enough support in the next Congress to pass it at all.

But pressure to pass the DREAM Act is growing, as more and more outside voices lobby for action.

“It is the right thing to do and should be done now,” reads the letter.

Review for the newest local restaurant, Centara Thai Cuisine

“I’m having a bad day—only a lunch break can make it better,” I said, morosely, to Daryl. Daryl is never one to turn down good food, which is why we’re such a good pair.

“I’ve only got about an hour before I have to go back to the lab,” he crackled through the phone.  He was likely in his 12^th floor office at the hospital, and I was calculating exactly how long it would take to pick him up, navigate through the parking garage and get something delicious to soothe my crankiness.

I don’t like to rush my dining experiences, but knew Daryl was always more flexible when food was involved—He’d sit an extra few minutes.

I had been meaning to try Centara, the Thai restaurant near the Stony Brook train station that replaced Cosmo’s, a pizza and gyro place.  I never visited Cosmo’s since I’m too elitist with my pizza, and due to its closing I suspect it was just one of the many mediocre pizza suppliers that pepper Long Island.

As we walk through the glass door with a taped sign reading “Cash Only J,” the breeze behind us seems to follow and transform into a bright, simple décor.  I love the light green color of the walls, and the big windows surrounding the dining room allow diners to bask in the sunlight.

I’ve found that a Thai restaurant’s idea of a Thai iced tea is a good indicator of how the rest of the meal will follow.  Daryl and I each order one, and it’s decent.  Thai iced teas are similar to chai tea in flavor because they both usually feature anise, cinnamon and cardamom—there’s no hard and fast way to make either.  I prefer a good Thai iced tea to a chai because of the added sugar and the floating layer of condensed milk on top.  Don’t let the “condensed” part get you—it’s wonderful when it mixes with the spiced black tea underneath and turns the whole drink to a bright orange color.  I’ve seen variations of the drink that have half and half or coconut milk on top instead, and I’ve always enjoyed the condensed milk best because it gives the best creamy flavor.

Centara’s  Thai iced tea has a good level of sugar that won’t hurt your teeth like commercially brewed and sweetened iced teas can, and I believe theirs has half and half as the dairy layer.

The appetizers are only a few dollars each, so we order both the fried spring rolls with chicken and chicken satay.  The spring rolls are very pleasantly crispy and not overly oily, and they pair well with the chili sauce accompaniment.  However, the little morsels of chicken are few and far between.

“You ever notice how a lot of appetizers come in odd numbers?” I ask Daryl, cutting the fifth in half.  It’s always an issue for me, as I prefer my lunch and dinner dates with only one other person.

Fortunately, there are four skewers of chicken satay, seasoned yellow with turmeric and paired with a peanut dipping sauce.  The chicken is nicely seasoned, but the peanut sauce is mediocre and tastes too jarred for my liking.

The satay is served with a tiny bowl of equally mediocre cucumber salad.  It is far too watered down to taste the vinegary and sweet notes of the dressing over cucumbers, carrots and onions.  Luckily, there are only about two big spoonfuls in the bowl.

The “Dancing Squid” entrée I ordered is more of a slow shuffle—the awkward dance at Prom you just wish would end.  The dish of squid, vegetables and noodles is saturated with a sauce that is salty and a tad fishy.  The fishiness isn’t necessarily a detriment, but the salt accentuates it to a point where no other flavors are noticeable.  The small, curling pieces of plump squid aren’t particularly flavorful and the delicate vegetable flavors are muted by the salty, fishy sauce.

Finally, the squid’s dance is over, and I jealously eye Daryl’s lunch.  He lets me steal a couple spoonfuls of peanut curry, a nutty and spicy mixture of the spice, creamy coconut milk and peanuts.  It is served with rice along with zucchini, carrots and red pepper, and is just spicy enough to merit itself as a curry.

Daryl would later say that it tasted like spicy Jiffy, but I don’t think it was quite thick enough.  I learned my lesson, though—stick to what you know at Centara.

Yet despite the massive undertaking, there was never any disclosure made to the students that the census was being filled out on their behalf. Nor does it seem there was any desire on the part of the university to engage and involve the campus community in the process at all.

Census officials from the local Ronkonkoma field office were provided with records of every student living in dormitories on campus, according to Alan DeVries, Associate Director of Residential Programs.

“They came with an authorization for specific data contained in our housing database and I provided them with rosters that did not include student ID,” he said via email.

The census, which is conducted every ten years, is a series of questions aimed at determining just how many people are currently residing in each state, as well as the demographic makeup of the nation. Figures compiled by the U.S Census Bureau dictate the distribution of over $400 billion in federal funding, as well as representation in Congress.

Traditionally, the bureau mails census forms to every home address in the country. Families then fill out one form and mail it back to their regional office. But for college students living away from home, the process is different. Instead of being counted on their parents’ census forms, students are usually counted using the census’ “group quarters operation.”

“We started the group quarters program for people who live in places not considered housing units,” said Patricia Valle, an Assistant Regional Manager at the New York regional census center. That includes places like nursing homes and prisons in addition to colleges and universities. Unlike the standard ten question census form mailed to millions of homes, the group quarters census form asks for less information and is used to gather accurate counts quickly. The form asks for name, age, date of birth, race or origin and gender.

The option of conducting a group quarters enumeration instead of door to door enumeration is left up to individual campuses, according to Valle. Since the group quarters method relies on official—and, generally, confidential—records kept by the university, they must obtain authorization from the administration. Often, universities actually prefer the group quarters method, says Valle, as the prospect of dozens of census workers patrolling dormitories for days raises concerns about security and privacy.

“We ask each administration ‘What is the best way to enumerate on a college campus?’” said Yolanda Finley, a spokeswoman for the New York regional census office. “The directive on how to enumerate would have to come from the university.”

According to university spokeswoman Lauren Sheprow, however, Stony Brook was never given any alternative to the group quarters process.

“At no time was the University offered the opportunity to use any approach other than a group census,” she said via email. “Had the option been presented to do it another way we would have implemented it, but that was not the case.”

But those claims are strongly disputed by the regional census office.

“There were many conversations,” said Valle. “We offered the option of doing this door to door.” If anything, she added, the census would have recommended direct communication with the campus community.

“We always prefer to go door to door,” she said.

“A recommendation was made by administrators to conduct a group quarters enumeration and not go door to door,” added Finley.

Valle said that conversations were held with Alan DeVries on multiple occasions, dating back to last year.

“In September ’09 we began identifying natural targets for group quarters operations,” said Valle. From there, advance units were dispatched to begin laying out the framework at each group quarters location. At Stony Brook, a coordinator was dispatched to campus in February to prepare for the census.

DeVries was the point of contact for the census this year, but it was unclear whether the decision to use the group quarters method came from him or someone else at the university.

The biggest question remains why the enumeration process was kept a secret. There appears to have been no significant effort made by the university to inform students that they were being counted. After speaking with roughly 100 students who reside in the dorms, exactly zero knew that the census was ever here.

Will Apple's newest gadget change the way we attend college?

There’s a futuristic scene in the movie The Time Machine in which an elementary school, circa 2030, is on a field trip to the New York Public Library. The students aren’t carrying pad and paper though, or even one of those audio devices for guided tours. Instead, each has what looks like a glass pane (we’re told later it’s really a “microscanner”) strapped over his or her shoulder roughly the same size of…well, of an iPad.

The impact that Apple’s latest gizmo will have on education is yet to be seen. But barely two weeks since we got our hands on a device, its clear that the iPad has the potential to fundamentally change how students attend college.

The concept behind the iPad has been tried before, with little to no success. Other computer companies introduced swiveling tablet PCs years ago, targeting the college market with features meant to make note taking and other academic endeavors easier. But none of them took hold.

Apple’s foray into the market is different. For starters, it’s Apple. The company’s younger, loyal fan base and aggressive marketing of college students is what led to their line of laptops becoming as omnipresent as Frisbees and Obama stickers on our nation’s quads.

The iPad also benefits from incredible technology. I don’t know enough about microprocessors and megawatts and gigawhatevers to speak authoritatively about the technical aspects of the iPad, but having used one for two weeks now I can report that it feels fast, its easy to use and can do just about everything I need it to do in a classroom.

Universities are quickly adjusting to the new market of tablet devices as well, and are taking a wide range of approaches. Princeton University made headlines when they publically banned the iPad within its ivy gates, citing potential issues with their wireless network. Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania will be handing out iPads to their entire incoming freshman class this fall, and George Fox University will give students an option between a Macbook and an iPad for their freshmen.

Both schools have expressed hope that devices like the iPad will reduce the number of textbooks needed by students and make other common academic necessities—PDF files, PowerPoint presentations, online components like Blackboard—available all in one place.

The textbook question is probably the most uncertain. If there is going to be a killer app on collegiate iPads, it is going to be whether the largest producers of textbooks embrace the new format.

So far, the process has been slow. Barnes & Noble, the biggest seller of textbooks in the world, runs many of the nation’s largest university bookstores on college campuses, including here at Stony Brook. They have offered digital textbooks since before the rise of digital eReaders like Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony eReader.

“We have sold digital textbooks since the early 2000s,” said Jade Roth, the Vice President of Books at Barnes & Noble College Booksellers. “But there has not been a great deal of sales.”

Stay with Think Magazine for the best on-campus coverage of Southampton.

The Famous Windmill at Stony Brook Southampton

Additional reporting by Katie Watt 

Facing yet another round of state budget cuts, Stony Brook University took the drastic step of announcing that by summer’s end, the Stony Brook Southampton campus would no longer operate as a semi-independent college, leaving the school’s 500 students to find a new university by the fall. 

“Everything will continue until August 31,” said University President Samuel Stanley. “But after that time, this won’t be a residential campus any further.” 

The news was met with anger, sadness and frustration from the campus community, a close-knit group of students and faculty. Students were given no notice of the university’s decision until an article was published on the hyper local online news site 27east.com the night before the official announcement. President Stanley began his remarks by apologizing for the way the campus found out about the news, saying that it was the intention of the administration to make the announcement themselves on Thursday. 

That did little to quiet students though. Many in the audience demanded to know why the decision-making process was kept a secret. The administration has been aware of the budget cuts for many months, and the discussions about possible cuts at Southampton had been ongoing for weeks. 

“It just happened so quickly, I really don’t know how I was supposed to react,” said Elliott Kurtz, a freshman at Southampton. 

“I found out about this at 9 o clock last night. I thought it was a joke,” said Amanda Sylvester, a sophomore. “We were never asked. We were never given the opportunity to try and change this.” 

The effective closure of the 81-acre campus will save an estimated $6.7 million per year, or approximately 20% of the total amount of the most recent cuts to Stony Brook, according to Stanley. Administration officials also made it clear that Southampton cuts were a last resort, having already trimmed the budget elsewhere. The main campus has endured numerous cuts since the current state budget crisis began in 2008, and the Manhattan campus was cut in half as well, from two floors to one. 

None of this was any comfort to students, who charged that the salaries of the administrators on the stage could make a serious dent in the $6.7 million needed annually to keep Southampton open. President Stanley alone makes $650,000 a year, and the combined salaries of those on stage totaled over $1.4 million based on 2008 figures. 

There was also animosity over the number of visits paid to Southampton by President Stanley. He estimated that he had made the hour-long trip between three and five times since he began at Stony Brook in July, but students didn’t sound convinced with those estimates. 

“Its hard to say how much he actually fought for us because we didn’t see any of that process,” said Kurtz. 

The timing of the administration’s decision is particularly tricky for students who are not graduating this year. All Southampton students will be welcomed at the main campus, but transferring to another university will be difficult, especially since many deadlines have already passed. At NYU, Penn State and Cornell for example, deadlines for transfer students passed as long ago as February 1. Other universities, like Hofstra, accept transfer applications on a rolling basis but encourage early applications. Albany and Binghamton, both fellow SUNY campuses, are still accepting transfer applications.

Over the remainder of this week, Think Magazine will be collecting questions from students at Stony Brook University. The top three questions as decided by our readers will be submitted to Huffington Post College. If your question is selected, we will film you asking it in person. From there, the video will be placed on The Huffington Post’s home page along with 24 other questions submitted from universities around the country.

Then, tune in to the live “Open for Questions” webcast at The White House with top administration officials including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and top domestic policy advisor Melody Barnes and see if your question gets asked!

So now its up to you. Think of any question relating to higher education that you have been dying to know. Submit your question to Think via the comments thread below, or on Facebook or Twitter. You can even get a head start on a video and post your question to our YouTube channel.

The deadline for questions is Friday at noon, so get to work!

If you have any questions about this, send an email to info@thinksb.com or give us a call at (631) 320-THINK.

The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers a clear history of the current financial crisis.

A raving review from The Atlantic Monthly on the flap jacket of “Too Big To Fail” states: “Andrew Ross Sorkin pens what may be the definitive history of the banking crisis.” The adulation is not undeserved as Sorkin describes the tumultuous global financial crisis in adept detail and succinctness. The business lexicon of “too big to fail” may appear anachronistic to readers, but Sorkin makes it accessible. Too big to fail refers to the practice of governments deeming certain financial institutions to be of systematic importance and whose continued ineptitude would have adverse effects on the economy. “Too Big To Fail” is a harrowing account of the demise of the Second Gilded Age exemplified by the largest scale government intervention in modern history at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Andrew Ross Sorkin at the offset does not profess to be an economics professor. Sorkin provides a sociological examination of Wall Street executives and government bureaucrats. He devotes a portion of each chapter encapsulating the biographical details and related factoids of key figures in the book. The narrative of “Too Big To Fail” is driven by jarring interviews conducted by the author and loosely construed anecdotes. Readers have to assert their own judgment in evaluating the truthfulness and validity of Sorkin’s claims.

Sorkin depicts an insulated world where sordid type A individuals inhabit. One bemusing anecdote involves the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Timothy Geithner. Geithner’s meticulous personality is tested by a driver who fails to show up in a prompt manner. Sorkin states: “Geithner, arguably the second most powerful central banker in the nation after Bernanke, stepped into the twenty-person deep taxi line. Panting his pockets, he looked sheepishly at Mitchell. “Do you have cash on you?” (60). Geithner can be noted for his bargaining efforts and strong-arming in orchestrating proposed mergers for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley respectively.

“Too Big To Fail” progresses in a linear fashion from the initial murmurs of Lehman Brothers’ insolvency to the roundtable of the “Big 9” Wall Street firms accepting TARP (Trouble Asset Relief Program) funds. Sorkin in a NYMag interview describes how his work mirrors that of the film Crash: “And of course as the story progresses, they cataclysmically come together and you start seeing the connections between things” (Sorkin). A further parallel can be drawn in the conflicted and morally bankrupt nature of the characters in Crash to that of Wall Street executives.

“Too Big To Fail” operates to a certain extent as a self reflective meditative work. Sorkin provides instances in which the key figures of the book absolve or eradicate prior missteps and erroneous misjudgments. The interplay of characters and events is a recurring theme in the book. One poignant example involves the ouster of Jamie Dimon (current CEO and Chairman of JP Morgan) from Citigroup. Sorkin states: “The untenable situation finally came to head a few days after the new Citigroup reported a disappointing third quarter, the result of a summer of turmoil as Russia defaulted and the hedge fund LTCM nearly collapsed” (75). The ouster motivated Dimon to build JP Morgan as an efficient business model and revered financial institution. Dimon gutted unnecessary expenditures and minimized risk, while employing less leverage to boost returns in the financial balance sheet.

Sorkin surmises that the endearing pretense of being ‘top dog’ was galvanized upon by most Wall Street firms. The gold standard or titan in the investment banking industry is Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs’ practice of over leveraging its assets led to Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley following suit. Leveraging is a financial ratio measuring a company’s debt to assets. While overleveraging may result in greater returns and maximization of gains, the unintended consequence is costlier rates of borrowing and riskier bets incurred by the company. Sorkin notes the trend with the following: “Lehman was leveraged 30:7 to 1; Merrill Lynch was only slightly better, at 26.9 to 1. Paulson knew that Merrill, like Lehman, was awash in bad assets” (72). The notion that Merrill Lynch operated in the short term in relying on firm rather than client money served as a red herring to the firm’s insolvency in the subsequent months.

Sorkin noting the sequence of events that transpired in the latter months of 2008 states: “Each of the former Big Five investment banks failed, was sold, or was converted into a bank holding company. Two mortgage-lending giants and the world’s largest insurer were placed under government control” (529). One can easily vilify the greed and hubris that typifies Wall Street. The only figure that Sorkin ascribes a degree of humility to is Treasury Sec. Paulson. Paulson in his brief tenure was assailed by the ‘left’ and ‘right’ of the political spectrum for his decision making and bore the media purported moniker of ‘Mr. Bailout.’

Paulson was an unlikely candidate for the position of Treasury Secretary. He had served in Goldman Sachs for 32 years, accumulating a personal net worth of an estimated $700 million in the process. The opportunity to shape history amidst the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression outweighed the contentious nature of the Treasury Secretary position in a lame duck Administration. Sorkin on Paulson foreseeing the impending fiasco states: “The sub prime mortgage mess, which had already begun to have repercussions. Bear Stearns and others were deeply involved in this business, and he needed to find a way to obtain “wind down authority” (49). Paulson had a vested interest in extending the ‘wind authority’ to Goldman Sachs and other investment banks as the aforementioned institutions lacked expansive failsafe preventative measures.

The unprecedented government intervention to temper the precipitous decline in the financial markets resulted in Paulson assuming the role of a scapegoat. The Treasury Sec. was adamant in his decision of forcing Lehman Brothers towards a path of insolvency, while providing a direct taxpayer funded financial pipeline to AIG. It is disparaging to note that AIG received $60 billion in TARP funds tabulating to an 80% ownership stakes by the American taxpayer. Goldman Sachs in a roundabout manner received $12.9 billion from the AIG bailout. This poses an incriminating conflict of interest on the part of former Goldman Sachs CEO turned Treasury Sec. Paulson’s role in guiding the AIG bailout.

“Too Big To Fail” will prove a compelling read to business aficionados and more importantly the American public. The $700 bailout has been described among commentators as both a necessary evil and corporate welfare. If you are looking to arrive at your own opinion, Sorkin’s book is a great place to start.

Stop the presses. That is what the Statesman faces in the wake of massive USG budget cuts.

The Statesman, Stony Brook University’s oldest newspaper dating back to the Oyster Bay campus in the late 1950s, is facing the biggest cut in USG funding in it’s 53 year history.

The Undergraduate Student Government budget for the 2010-2011 academic year, which was approved by the Senate Tuesday evening, reduces the Statesman’s USG line budget to $2,500 from an allocation last year of over $27,000.

That will be a steep and painful cut the paper will have to endure if they do not recoup some of the lost funding. Last year, despite substantial revenue generated from the sale of ads, the paper was operating at a $39,000 loss according to the paper’s business manager Frank D’Alessandro.

“We were operating at a loss the previous year too, but not as bad,” he said.

The cut has Statesman Editor-in-Chief April Warren and the rest of the student staff questioning how to further cut costs and minimize the damage.

“The Statesman has been looking into going weekly,” said Warren. “We’ve asked Frank [D’Alessandro] to crunch the numbers.”  The paper currently puts out two issues per week.

Reducing the frequency of publication would be just the latest in a series cost cutting maneuvers for the Statesman. In the last year, the paper reduced the circulation of each issue by 1000 copies, they eliminated their paid advertising staff position, D’Alessandro took a pay cut, and expenses like travel costs that had previously been covered by the paper now must be paid out of pocket by the student editors and writers.

But the USG argues that even with little or no funding from student activities fees, the paper should be able to put out a quality paper at least once a week.

“If the Press can operate with $40,000 every other week, the Statesman should be able to get by with $80,000,” the approximate amount generated by advertising each year, said one USG source who is familiar with the budget process but wished to remain anonymous because the budget is not yet finalized.

Other campus publications like The Press and The Patriot were granted budgets at the same level or slightly higher than this year’s. And the online news site The Independent is seeking USG funding for the first time. Think Magazine does not currently receive USG funding.

“The fact that they are unable to function properly means they haven’t done a good job managing their money,” the USG official continued.

The cut may have been particularly severe because The Statesman failed to schedule a budget hearing, which would have allowed the staff to explain their financial situation to a member of the USG budget committee in person.

“That was a huge oversight on our part,” admitted Warren.

But one USG representative, again wishing to remain nameless until everything was finalized, cited that as an example of a feeling of entitlement.