SL 625

~ Laura

Really interesting story about the Zimmerman family. In the old days, the guy would have gotten 10-15 for manslaughter and be largely unknown to the world. Now, he has weird fame, his family has weird fame, and he’s walking the streets.

Would you pay $40,000 per year to send your kid to high school?

I love this story of a woman who saved her family from ebola using trash bags.

Of the 716 women in tech surveyed, 465 are not working today. 625 women say they have no plans to return to tech.

Published by Laura

8 thoughts on “SL 625”

  1. Lots of people do, pay 40K for schools.

    The list is stupid, though, ’cause it’s conflating a number of factors. First, private schools engage in cost management (i.e. high tuition models that are buttressed by selective aid, which, in effect, means that every paying student is paying for 1.5 students, or a similar ration) and giving (schools prefer to undercharge tuition and rely on annual giving to make up the rest (because families get tax breaks for giving, but not for tuition), but can only do so if they can rely on the annual giving). In addition, the NY schools are in high cost areas, where every cost, labor, buildings, upkeep is high. Finally, some of the schools (Hotchkiss, for example) are primarily boarding schools. The numbers reflect the cost of day students, but it’s common for boarding schools to charge nearly the same tuition for day students, because they generally want to encourage boarding.

    As an example, in our private school, the average giving expectation/student is something on the order of 3K, on top of tuition. Not everyone gives that, and the difference is made up by people who give more.

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  2. It also plays into that stereotype that all private schools have the 1950’s demographics. Many have worked hard to increase the economic and cultural and racial diversity. Many if not all have subsidy programs in place for families who cannot afford full tuition plus funds available for school uniforms and other ancillary costs.

    The girl is in a private school where 1/3 of the families are on a sliding scale subsidy. If public schools were like the ones that I attended back in the day (full on arts and music programs, small class sizes, intramurals, enrichment and learning assistance), that’s where we’d be.

    And only the most expensive private schools hit the $40,000 tuition mark – many private schools are less than half that price. I don’t know what this list tells me – there are all sorts of “most expensive X” lists that one could create. My response is, “and so???”

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    1. The majority of these schools are in NYC–couldn’t you ask the same question basically about a lot of NYC living standards? Who would pay $3K a month for a studio apartment? Who would pay $1 million for a two bedroom apartment overlooking an air shaft.

      Really what this list reveals is that living in NYC makes anyone’s view of the rest of the country unreasonably skewed. My school costs about half of the most expensive one here and offers the same amenities: seasonal produce, single-sex, well-loved traditions, turf athletic fields, 1:1 tech programs, STEM curriculum, trips abroad, small classes, students accepted to Ivy League schools. But we do it in a city that’s nowhere near as expensive to live in, so we don’t charge as much.

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  3. That survey about women in tech is so depressing. But it’s true – in my entire office there’s only one mom in a consulting delivery role. And when she had her second kid last spring she was forced to take unpaid maternity leave. She brought it up at the company meeting, you know, during the “anyone have any questions” time, and faced a big roomful of white and Indian guys breaking eye contact while she begged for paid time off. It was horrible.

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    1. Sis’s husband works at a large tech firm that you’ve heard of. A lot of the imported South Asian men in the company have their wives bringing them hot homemade lunches to work. Just a wild guess, but I’m assuming that the kind of guy who gets that kind of service is unlikely to think that a female colleague’s maternity leave is of burning importance to the company.

      (Sis’s husband asked (not too seriously, I hope), why don’t you bring me lunch?)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiffin

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      1. My sister is a nurse practitioner and she gets no paid maternity leave either. The large financial institution where I work does not have any paid maternity leave. Most places just offer disability at ~60% of full pay for 6 weeks if they offer anything at all.
        Paid maternity leave is a unicorn in the U.S.

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      2. That said, living in the Bay Area, I constantly hear that tech is notorious for treating women badly around pregnancy and leave. More than other industries. Start ups often have fewer than 50 EEs so FMLA doesn’t apply so good luck.

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