The World Series Champions!

Twenty-seven times! Again, while there are haters out there, no one can objectively deny that the Yankees organization has built up the most successful and storied team in the history of sports. I’ve heard arguments that Manchester United may come close to rivaling the Yankees organization, but I don’t know much about European soccer clubs so I can’t make the comparison.

I admit that I’m not the world’s biggest baseball fan and I am usually only a concerned fan of the Yankees during the months of October and November, but I was definitely happy to see such a great game last night. My only complaint is that these damn games start too late and thus end way too late. How do they expect working people to manage themselves at work the next day when these games and the celebrations are ending at 12:30am? That’s insane.

Congratulations to the Yankees on a terrific World Series championship!

For example, one school stopped using trays in their dining hall so they would cut back on both water usage and purchasing detergent. They’re going to save $30,000 per semester just for that minor change alone.

Other schools are hiring undergraduates to do some of the minor jobs that hired staff used to perform and saving a ton of money doing so. Students are filling twenty five staff positions at a college in Memphis, leading the school to save about $725,000 annually. That’s certainly nothing to scoff at and it also gives students a “real world” working experience. I’ve always been in favor of putting college students directly in the real world where there are real deadlines and, what I believe, is a better learning experience.

Campus life is getting a bit dirtier as housekeeping standards are relaxed. Oberlin College in Ohio saved $22,300 by scaling back on window washing, and Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., is power washing its sidewalks and windows once a year instead of twice. Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., is having office trash picked up weekly instead of daily, a change that eliminated three custodian jobs.

Hey – did the sidewalks have to be power washed twice a year anyway? I don’t think so. So, here’s hoping that other colleges learn from the institutions chronicled in the article linked above. In a perfect world, lowering a college’s operating expenses could – eventually – lead to a decrease in tuition. And that would certainly be something worth striving for at all colleges and universities.