- Image via Gothamist

Last September, we reported that PrezBo made a cool $1.4 million in Fiscal Year 2007, and in November we learned that that number ranked him third among all university presidents in the country. Sounds respectable, right?

Well, maybe not: it turns out that Fearless Leader still is not the highest paid university employee. No, that honor once again goes to dermatology professor Dr. David Silvers, who received $4.3 million in compensation in FY 2007, second in the country only to some dude who draws arrows on blackboard for a living (USC head football coach Pete Carroll, who received $4.4 million for winning two national championships and being on national TV way pretty much every Saturday in the fall).

This is at least the fourth year in a row that Silvers has been Columbia's highest paid employee, and he's making it count: according to the Daily News, as of last year "he owns a $1.3 million Tribeca apartment, a Park Ave. home and a $1 million pad in Southampton." Three houses - why, that's more than Dr. Zizmor! Maybe he can spare a dime.

- JCD

- Photo via The Earth Institute

It's not uncommon to see Columbia's celebrity economist in the news, but three times in one day? First, "the noted economist" tell the Press Trust of India (India's AP) that India needs to spend more money stimulating the economy to ensure a quick recovery. Sounds kinda like what a Columbia alum just signed.

Not content to merely be interviewed, Sachs also has his own essay on Fortune's website, detailing his plan on how to fix the Big 3 auto companies. "The Big 3 are not just another industry segment," he writes, "they are world-leading organizations that can reassume that role in technology and markets with an appropriate public-private partnership over the coming decade."

And because writing isn't enough, he's also headlining the launch of a new Earth Institute project, GlobalSoilMap.net, today at Casa Italiana. According to the event description, "this initiative, which will map most of the ice-free land surface of the globe over the next five years, will help scientists and policy makers tackle pressing issues like food security, climate change and water scarcity."

Next up: leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Hey, it's easier than saving the Dow.

A tipster has just forwarded the following PrezBo Communique to Bwog, in which your President assures recipients that despite the terrifyingly awful economy—PrezBo refers to it as "a landscape largely defined by uncertainty," but a crisis by any other name...—Columbia will be just fine, thank you.

For one thing, the University is still ahead of schedule Capital Campaign-wise, with over $3 billion in the bank. Still, expect the grant enviornment to "deteriorate further."

Regarding financial aid, PrezBo writes: "Let me also make clear that we will not permit the economic downturn to affect Columbia's long-standing commitment to need-blind admissions and the meeting of full financial need in student aid for undergraduates in the College and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. We will also work to sustain, and when possible enhance, current levels of financial aid in other schools and programs."

Full email after the jump.

The B-schoolers aren't the only ones effected by the recent economic downturn. It turns out undergrads are too! Instead of offering advice on how to save money, this week Bwog on a Budget returns with a special money-making feature.

The long and the short of it is simple: Bwog is broke. Given our economic state, there's little sense in discussing how to save money since there's no money to be saved. Yes, indeed the time has come for Bwog to make some money. But when the times are tough, finding work is hard. And finding work is especially hard for Columbia students, who not only prefer not to waste their talent doing remedial labor but also have their cumbersome class schedules to take into account. And while the minority of employed folks may receive a steady flow of cash each month, by October 18th, September's paycheck certainly must have diminished.

Bwog's done some research and discovered that Columbia's most lucrative resource is just where you'd expect to find lucrative things and people. Tucked away on the second floor of the business school library is Columbia's Behavioral Research Lab. If you are desperate enough, Bwog understands and suggests you sign up to receive the Behavioral Research Lab's bi-weekly announcements.

It's not often Bwog takes pity on the young masters of the universe of the Columbia Business School. They're territorial with small spaces, and not terribly warm to the idea of mere undergraduates purchasing food in Uris.

But still, this week is not a good week for the b-schooler. Here, observe as they stand in Uris and watch updates about the banking collapse.

Things are not looking good -- they can have those group study rooms.

Photo by Lydia DePillis

Meet Graciela Chichilnisky, an econ professor who was just awarded a $200,000 settlement from Columbia, which is roughly the amount of your tuition or any one product from Nussbaum & Wu. She has been suing Columbia on and off since 1990 (back when some of you Terrible 12s weren't even born!), claiming gender discrimination and unequal pay, claims that were also previously settled in 1995 for $500,000. As a result of the earlier suit, Chichilnisky's salary was raised from $60,000 to $110,000.

So then, in 2000, Chichilnisky stopped teaching math and started working exclusively in the econ. department because Columbia was terminating the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization, which she had chaired. She found that her office in the Mathemetics building was hers no longer. "It's almost impossible to believe this is happening," she told Spec. "The destruction and removal of one's office space, without notice is like a violation of one's physical space." Columbia repsponded that the school is crunched for space and that Chichilnisky wasn't making full use of her math office.

She filed another lawsuit claiming that her pay was less than that of her male counterparts, and that in dismantling her office, Columbia "has retaliated against her by breaching the terms of the settlement." In turn, Columbia filed counterclaims, charging that Chichilnisky had a secret second job -- she was the founder and CEO of a multimillion dollar corporation -- and that she never disclosed that to anyone in Low. According to CU, this was a breach of the previous settlement agreement.

Economics Prof. Joseph Stiglitz (who has recently filled in, on occasion, for Nicholas Kristof on his New York Times blog) may be January's most-quoted man -- and he's well on the way to claiming the same role in February. On Wednesday, he wrote a guest column in the Times preaching economic gloom, offering a suggestion to address pretty much every economic problem America is [potentially] facing. He also appeared on Monday in the Times of London (Day of Reckoning in the US Glasshouse) and, earlier in the month, in the Guardian (Stagflation Cometh). The winning quote? Describing the Fed's recent rate cuts as "pushing on a piece of string."

One of Columbia's most touted affiliates/sons, economist Milton Friedman, died today.

There is gnashing of teeth. Please, let us know your favorite (fictional) Milton Memories.

UPDATE, Sunday 3:10 PM: As pointed out by a commenter, news of the Business School potentially moving to Manhattanville was amply covered by the Spectator last year. The precise location is unconfirmed. The source for the Economics Department's cancelled move to Knox Hall is an administrator in the Economics department via a student tipster; this is also unconfirmed.

RETRACTION, Sunday 3:10 PM: The assertion that the Economics department will relocate to Uris is pure speculation.

Apparently rendering Uris Hall menacingly hostile to outsiders was hardly enough for business students still surrounded by the puerile pestilence of unkempt undergrads. According to an anonymous (and unofficial) tipster, the B-school now wants out of Morningside entirely. After one planned location, St. John's Cathedral Close, was given the kibosh (Bwog speculates it might have had something to do with that pesky Biblical maxim about money lenders in the temple, or perhaps the decidedly anticapitalist rhetoric penned on the bathroom walls of the nearby Hungarian Pastry Shop), Columbia is, our source states, planning to move its instruction of future captains of industry to- you guessed it- Manhattanville. The specific location, in fact, will probably be at the end of 125th Street, down by the new Hudson Piers Park, placing part of Alma Mater, at long last, directly on the Hudson shore.

The catch? Well, much of the proposed site is currently occupied, seemingly, by the viaduct of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Not to mention, our tipster writes, "we don't own (and we aren't gunning to own) the plots of land closest to the river". Bwog wonders what this new development could mean for Columbia's protracted battle with CB9 over the fate of the neighborhood. As for Uris, it could, apparently, be handed over to the Econ Department, especially now that its move to far-flung Knox Hall at the Union Theological Seminary has been nixed. And though the B-school's putative move is at least five years away, we hope for the sake of future Columbians that Flex and Dining Dollars are to be, once again, enshrined as legal tender at a deli that welcomes undergrads with the waft of hot, handmade sandwiches.

As if trying to singlehandedly bring prosperity to Africa, or at least co-ordinate his wardrobe of fuschia, canary yellow, and shiny neon green blazers wasn't enough, Bwog has learned that Columbia's own (and only) Catalan economist, Xavier Sala-i-Martin, has been serving as president of FC Barcelona, which won the 2006 UEFA Champions League cup back in May (and if the preceding sentence made no sense to you, it's time to hit Wikipedia). We may have noticed sooner if we'd paid a more recent visit to his popular and entertaining webpage, which shows him hoisting the UEFA trophy aloft like a newborn, er, metallic child (newcomers to the world of Xavier are encouraged to click through to see what the Spaniard's site has up its sleeve for theorists, Marxists, Australians, and anyone who "bothers the flies").

This brings to at least two the number of Columbia econ professors associated with professional soccer (Sunil Gulati is president of the US Soccer Federation). If current trends continue, Bwog believes, everyone in the econ department will either hold a Nobel Prize or preside over the hopes and dreams of a wild, scarf-clad hooligan mob.

-CJS

Item! Somewhere in between stifling the urge to can the Supreme Court and accusing reporters of treason, President Bush has tapped the Business School's resident inflation dove, Frederic Mishkin, to fill a spot on the Fed's seven-member board of governors.

Why does this matter, besides saving the students who made that music video commiserating with Glenn Hubbard, the B-School dean who didn't get to be Fed Chairman, the trouble of making another one? Our anonymous tipster opines that Mishkin's selection signals a fundamental shift in Fed policy: from stomping out inflation before it has a chance to spawn to allowing it to reach tadpole size and continue swimming unmolested. Which is odd, considering the GOP has traditionally been the party of inflation hawks, and doesn't typically move towards policies already embraced by Canadian and European central banks.

But enough about monetary theory. Bwog is still waiting for its Stiglitz-Bernanke death match!

We knew the School of the Arts kids are talented. We'd pin the SIPA kids for some serious clowning around if they were drunk enough. But who would ever... ever... suspect the semester's best student production would come out of the Business School.

But when B-School Dean Hubbard gets passed over as Fed Chair by Bernanke, the Follies Student Comedy Review gets a little inspiration from the Police and lets their voices be heard.

Word is the video played a significant part in Bruce Preston's Intermediate Macro review session.