Commencement Cash Cow

Pablo Eisenberg:

For years many colleges and universities have been paying speaker fees -- some quite substantial -- to celebrities, prominent academics and other well-known personalities to deliver commencement addresses or to give speeches during the academic year on campus and at student meetings.

It has been one of the best kept secrets of academic life, until the newspapers recently reported that Rutgers University had invited Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate in literature, to deliver this year's commencement address for $30,000. It was then reported that Rutgers students had upped the ante by inviting Snooki, of "Jersey Shore" fame, to the campus to talk about partying and having fun for the tidy sum of $32,000.

That Snooki should command more money than Morrison was somewhat surprising, but even more shocking was the willingness of Rutgers to spend a large amount of money on a commencement speech at a time when the university has experienced financial difficulties, cancelled pay raises and last June froze the salaries of 13,000 employees.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 10, 2011 2:49 AM
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