Blame it on...Comment...

In my opinion it is not the professors who cause these prices to rise it is the administration...

One other thing...There are Researchers and there are Instructors...If you do both at the university level then you surely do not give 100% to either of them...

Researchers should research and Professors should Teach...

Cwise, at 6:05 pm EDT on August 26, 2007

Show me the money (savings)

Dr. Twigg is a well-known scholar on the future of higher education. Someday, I’d really like to see actual financial figures from Dr. Twigg, Dr. Bowen, or PIRG (see related article in today’s IHE) on how they would financially operate and fund higher education, given the following:

* Academia is labor-intensive; labor costs affect tuition costs.

* Given today’s political gridlock, staggering public debt, and existing entitlements (e.g., Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid), increased public funding is unlikely.

* Those baccalaurates graduating average loan debts of $20,000, with $30,000 and higher possible.

* Many public pension funds are under-funded, hoping for better days.

Saying “that’s not my problem” does not make financial problems go away. In that vein — would denying the tenured faculty’s influence bring back Harvard’s recently-deposed president? I doubt it — and look at the message that event sent.

R.A. Shaw, at 7:05 am EDT on April 6, 2006

Blame it on the faculty

There are some institutional systems in place that are out of whack with the general working man/woman. For instance, tenure, which is like the jobs-bank with the U.S. auto companies. Once you get tenure, you can do no wrong, if you do wrong. There are famous well-branded universities with tenure faculty who are controversial commentators on foreign policy, and there are tenure faculty who once tenured, do nothing. They will go to one conference every two years, write a few lines in a publication every so often...and on and on...is the salary too high? We can’t judge can we? because the profs salary is an institutionalized feature that once given cannot be assessed. The only way around it is to freeze wage increases.Universities tend to be very inefficient, hiring excess staff and excess staff assistants, but that’s because of research funds. The professors have to spend the money, so they create jobs that in an otherwise real world couldn’t get pass go.

Anonymous Chicago, Adjunct, at 7:45 am EDT on April 6, 2006

Fed up with Start-up Packages

Faculty salaries are not the problem, it is the fact that the scientists and engineers are demanding outrageous toys (start-up packages) that will supposedly make them super-productive. Our children are paying higher tuition and accumulating $100,000 debts so that these “stars” can always have shiny new toys that they can boast about at their conferences in tropical resorts. Who’s doing the cost-benefit analaysis....

Miser, at 10:05 am EDT on April 6, 2006

Freeze Wages???

Anonymous Chicago thinks wages should be frozen?? That’s a good one — I thought wages had been frozen 7 years ago — that’s how long it’s been since I’ve had a raise. In fact, I have had a pay cut for the past three years, as health insurance cost increases have been passed on to us rather than being absorbed by the institution. My net pay is significantly lower now than three years ago.

“Freeze wages", indeed.

Duffer, at 10:07 am EDT on April 6, 2006

If we function as the community colleges — no research, just teaching...what happens to the progress of the individual disciplines?

BB, at 11:10 am EDT on April 6, 2006

Specious?

The claim of speciousness about “tenure has an accompanying long-term price tag that easily exceeds $1 million per person” is absurd and comedic.

Without tenure, programs without public support can be eliminated immediately, without a declaration of financial exigency, as is the case with tenure. A 40-year stream of payments can be reduced to zero payments, immediately.

As to the “value” of an active researcher — that active researcher is free to find his own way, at any time. In fact, if he produces something of real value, his compensation would be greater than at university. If he doesn’t produce something of real value — why should the public subsidize him?

About “academic freedom” — this is the USA. Citizens have the rights — none superior or inferior. Just ask U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney.

As for “freedom from bias” — when is government-subsidized academia going to have a honest, open debate on charters and vouchers? About the deadweight loss from excessive government spending?

As to any “evidence” — what is 99% clear is how Gen Y is being financially burdened by student loan debt from out-of-control college costs. Got a solution? Step right up and present your financial plan.

B.J., at 11:10 am EDT on April 6, 2006

Faculty Value

Basically faculty are the universities since it’s their expertise and prominence that give value to the universities. Do you think that students would continue to attend Harvard and Yale if they were being taught by adjunct professors or teaching assistants without having a knowledgable professor behind them?

The biggest draw for our students is that they have access to our faculty. Faculty who are publishing and producing results through research that makes a difference in the world. That’s what students want exposure to. Not just the book learning but the real life experience that goes along with it.

Trying to offer courses according to student needs would be chaotic at best. Every single student comes with different ideas and desires. To try to meet individual desires for when courses should be offered would be disastrous. What would suit one person or small group wouldn’t fit another. Can you imagine how costly that would be to have to hire the number of faculty that it would take to offer courses according to student desires?

Do we run other organizations totally at the whim of the clientele or does someone else make the general operating decisions because they have objectives to meet as an organization? Higher education is no different. In order to achieve and maintain accreditations, which are important to the students, higher education must meet that criteria to stay in the game.

spiper, Assoc Dean for Administration, at 11:35 am EDT on April 6, 2006

Plato’s bones roll over

This assessment of higher education and the role of faculty voices a perception that has grown more prevalent since the 80s, one that privileges economic efficiency over intellectual integrity. Business models do not bode well for higher education. Business is driven almost exclusively by the bottom line, so “measurable” results are easy: we spent X and we earned Y. Einstein costs us $$$$ and only teaches the occasional course and Joe Everyman costs us $ and teaches 5-5-3. An efficient business model based on quantifiable data would privilege Joe Everyman, and could (assuming we ignore grants and patents and so on) make a tidy little spreadsheet to show that Everyman was the more cost-effective choice. Much of this thinking is linked to the belief that higher education is (or should be) a training camp for the workforce, a vocational institution where people go to learn skills so they can find work. An undeniable relationship between higher education and income exists, and potential earning ability certainly drives students to colleges and universities, but hopefully they leave with a broader, more enlightened view of the meaning of life. When university education is subjected to business models, the criteria used to measure its success are reduced to those quantities that can be tallied: percentage of students graduated, cash flow, average income of a graduate, increase in new first-year students, and so on. Everything that cannot be easily reduced to a number and calculated by staff is discarded without question – it disappears in the margins of a spreadsheet. I take great umbrage when people start talking about higher education as if our goal is to attract and graduate as many workers as possible. University professors occupy a referred place in American culture. They are the ones primarily responsible for stimulating intellectual curiosity and a sense of personal responsibility in young adults. They teach at the highest level and need to be able to mentor the brightest students and most promising students into rational lives of reasoned judgment. Many of the qualities that competent professors nurture in their students cannot be measured by the types of number-crunching systems currently being advocated as measures of a professor’s efficiency. How do you quantify ethics? Or quest for knowledge? Appreciation of art? A reluctance to blindly follow the mandates of others? Intellectual independence? And so on. If we have students who do not complete their degrees (for reasons of their own), but who become rational, ethical, contributing members of the world, we have succeeded as teachers (although perhaps we failed as administrators of a degree program). If we have students who complete their degree, but graduate no wiser than when they entered the university, we have failed. What is the function of higher education? That is the issue. If it is to get everyone into college and graduated so they can find a job, then we can’t rightly call it “higher” education. If it is to offer opportunities for the brightest students to learn from experts and to expand their awareness, then it is higher education. Using an economically driven business model to reshape higher education in America will result in a gutting of everything that makes a university education worthwhile. If we are committed to this type of limited thinking, we might as well go all the way and remove all the books from our libraries that have not been recently read (after all, they’re taking up shelf space – it costs us money to store these). Let’s stop staging Shakespeare, and put on The Lion King instead. It will draw a larger audience. In fact, movies draw larger audiences than theatre, so let’s dump theatre programs. And humanities as well. No money in staring at a painting. We don’t need art, or philosophy, or women’s studies, or communication (unless we can tie it to business). Let’s gut all the programs except for the most popular ones, the ones that result in jobs or revenue streams. Is this really what we want to do to higher education? Turn universities into eight-year community colleges? Replace professors who are key figures in their fields with day-laborers that we can hire for a fraction of a professor’s salary? Eliminate tenure so that the next time the president has a ninety-percent approval rating and wants to bomb a country, intellectuals cannot speak out without risking losing their jobs? Worse yet, do we want to send students out into the world who have never read Kant, debated existentialism, critiqued a painting by Bruegal, seen an Opera by Rossini, or read a poem by Elizabeth Browning?

Kevin Boon, Penn State, at 11:55 am EDT on April 6, 2006

Faculty salaries

The article on faculty salaries does not appear to pay adequate attention to salaries for faculty in departments which are traditionally not well-paid, such as teacher education. Teacher educators receive the least amount of resources and are often forced to teach several nights a week plus drive 100+ miles that same day to supervise student teachers. I did all this at a branch campus of the University of Pittsburgh for under $41,000 a year, and I still have student loans I can’t pay off. For that reason, I got out of academe (teacher education), and am going into the parallel field of instructional design, designing training programs for employees in business, government, and industry; the pay is twice as much. My former colleagues who were stuck in this institution were envious that I could leave, and said that if they were younger, they would do the same, as the whole atmosphere was miserable, and morale among faculty was very, very low.Faculty members have to be treated equally with regard to pay; that is, the salaries for teacher educators should be just as high as those given to scientists or engineers. Faculty salaries are not the reason why college costs have risen so high. It is wasteful spending, too large administrative salaries, and generally inefficient management of funds.

Janice Tehie, at 12:30 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

Dinosaurs

The whole system of “higher education” is too rigid. What is needed is educational flexibility: for teachers, for students, for everyone. Lockstep. The rules haven’t changed in a century. Students are told to take so many “courses” in a “discipline” else they won’t get a “degree”. Professors are hired to teach so many “courses” in the “discipline” else they won’t get the job and having got it, keep it. Administrators are too often merely inspectors hired (or enticed from teaching duties) to ensure students and professors follow the age-old rules, rules designed for different times, different circumstances. Universities’ ruling boards are too impressed with their own importance and too out of touch with the academic world to do any more with their power than to support the ticket-takers. What is a “course”? Who says it should be 3 “credit-hours” per term? Or 4 or 5, if we “count” lab hours? Anyone who has tried to suggest a revamping of course schedules (hours per day, days per week, weeks per term, terms per year) knows about brick walls, walls built not only by administrators but by faculty and by students too. What is a discipline? Anyone who has been involved in trying to introduce new “disciplines”, especially “inter-disciplines”, can tell stories of bitter turf wars, of knock-down-drag-out fights more befitting a sand-box than a respectable academic institution. If we North Americans are imaginative and revolutionary enough to create a 21st-century economy based primarily on ideas and services instead of widget-like things, can invent the Internet and put its electronic world to unimagined and unbelievably productive use, why in “higher” education do we still march in lockstep to old 19th c. German ideas? Most dinosaurs got too big and slow. Even developing a second brain to run the hind end didn’t work. They simply died out. The only ones that survived, it seems, were small agile creatures that adapted to the new environment, changed diets, grew feathers in place of scales, became birds. Three cheers for the Commission on the Future of Higher Education and its attempt to stir the pot. Unfortunately, given the entrenched interests determined to prevent fundamental change, they are likely to supply band-aids instead of the necessary major reconstructive surgery. When students tire of sacrificing arms and legs to pay for professors’ preferences for their own learning (i.e., “research”) over students’ learning (i.e., “teaching”); when the powers that be decide it is more economical to pay certain academics to do only research in dedicated research institutes and others do only teaching in dedicated teaching institutes, so that universities can drop the pretence of trying to do both simultaneously; when sports fans recognize that many “universities” could and should devote their resources and energies entirely to sports, thereby allowing us to drop the charade of the oxymoronic “athletic scholarship”; when society recognizes that the Internet is far more useful for education and training in everything from languages to scientific and technical skills than it is for idiotic pleasures and therefore needs to be integrated into all education; when we realize that the future of education is less to train than to re-train; when we finally listen to our philosophers who argue that the only purpose of “higher” education is to teach students to teach themselves; and when governments and parents and students finally run out of patience and refuse to support our bloated, inflexible “universities” – only then will the old unfit institutions die and new relevant ones appear to take their place. Anthony Rhinelander Professor Emeritus in Historyrhinelander@stu.ca

Anthony Rhinelander, Professor Emeritus in History at St Thomas University, at 1:05 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

Faculty pay

Faculty pay is at the heart of the issue. The salary range for faculty pay for those performing identical work may be five times or more that of normal non-management professional employees, even including counterparts in K-12. This is not so much the result of the profession as it is an outgrowth of faculty unionization. Very few professional employees unionize. The reason for the huge gap between the least paid and the most paid is due to union leaders tossing adjunct and new faculty under the bus to serve themselves, resulting in a bar bell as opposed to a normal curve in pay. Schools have to cut pay on the low end to make up for overpayment on the top end. Cutting faculty will do little to solve this problem, since union agreements vitually always call for organizations to eat their own young. If for-profits can avoid the bullets currently being fired by the NEA, they will force the issue by paying more to good young professors, forcing the overpaid full bulls into the tar pit.

sillyone, at 1:45 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

Measuring the Real Costs of Tenure

Re. the study: “Frequently Asked Questions About College Costs” by Robert C. Dickeson. In this report Mr. Dickeson notes that tenure is costly to colleges and universities with an expense of as much as $1 million per faculty member. My responses are:

1. How is this amount computed? Over what time period is it computed (e.g., 1 million per faculty member/year, per/decade, per 30 year academic career). The lone figure of $1 million with out additional data re. how it is computed and to how many faculty it applies (e.g., 1 in 100, 1 in 1000, 1 in 100,000, etc.) is meaningless.

2. Removing tenure will not automatically result in cost savings for academic institutions. For faculty who have multiple job opportunities in the private sector (e.g., business school faculty, law school faculty, scientists, engineers, economists, etc.) tenure is one of the compensations for the lower pay they receive in academia — relative to what they would receive in a private sector job. (The April/May issue of the AAUP publication ACADEME will print this data.) Elminate tenure and fewer engineers, lawyers, scientists, business and economic degree holders will be willing to become professors. In order to staff faculty positions in these (and other) diciplines, colleges and universities will have to compensate for the lost benefit of tenure — with higher annual salaries. Thus, unless Mr. Dickeson has precisely computed the pay premium that elimination of tenure will cost, he cannot conclude that eliminating tenure will save colleges and universities money. Indeed, even a moderate annual salary premium needed to compensate for the loss of tenure benefits, paid out every year over a 30 year academic career, could be enormous.

3. The salaries paid to adjunct faculty that Mr. Dickeson encourages colleges and universities to utilize more heavily are embarrassingly (and unfairly) low. The April/May issue of ACADEME addresses this topic in depth — using U.S. Department of Education Data from the most recent National Survey of Post-secondary Faculty.

4. Full-time faculty at private colleges and universities are generally prohibited from unionizing under the Supreme Court’s decision in NLRB v. Yeshiva University. Public college and university may legally unionize. However, despite the presence of faculty unions in public universities, faculty salaries at these schools have (on average) been falling relative to the salaries of faculty at private colleges (according to the AAUP’s annual faculty salary surveys during the last decade). Thus, it is hard to know how one can argue that faculty unions are keeping faculty salaries artifically high.

Dr. Saranna Thornton Chair, AAUP Committee on the Economic Status of the Profession Elliott Associate Professor of Economics Department of Economics Hampden-Sydney College

Saranna Thornton, Associate Professor at Hampden-Sydeny College, at 2:25 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

Heart of Academia

The heart of an academic institution is its faculty. Without faculty you might have an organization, but not an academic institution.

JA, at 4:15 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

Athletics Add to High Costs

Why hasn’t anyone mentioned the exorbitant costs of athletics as a huge ticket proce for the students and taxpayers! The recent research on these costs was titled, “Sports Soar, Public Pays.”

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article

TT, Tenured Associate Professor at Big State U, at 4:35 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

Blaming the cost of education on faculty is like blaming the cost of apples on the apple tree. Higher cost in general seems to imply the need for Taj Mahal type facilities. The race to have the best “palace” of education has spun way out of control. Constant updates in technology and the need to be connected to everything but fiscal sanity seems to be the rule of the day, not the pay for the average professor in your average college. The cost of luxury in housing education simply gets passed on to the students, widening the gap between who can and can not afford a college education.

bb, facilities director at montserrat college of art, at 5:15 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

Response

There are problems througout academia. The tendacy to try to deflect the rather large faculty role in all this by pointing out administrators or such misses part of the point — faculty should still be trying to put their own house in order and shouldn’t be opposing those who, since they have failed to do it themselves, now propose to do it for them.

The claim that business efficiency is a negative force is also inaccurate. Business efficiency means meeting the demands of customers rather than seeing them as privilaged to recieve your opinions.

Socrates and Plato, it should be noted, refused all pay for their instruction. They certainly did not recieve any government aid. If you, like they, wish to pursue something for which there is no demand at the time, than I suggest that like they you do it on your own time and your own money, rather than leeching off those of us who are not interested in supporting your appreciation of art and the better things in life.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 6:15 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

Unhappy? Go your own way

About issue of athletics — the best programs support themselves. If one thinks tuition is subsidizing sports — take the evidence to the newspapers. They love that stuff. Otherwise — such claims are horse excrement.

As to claims former presidents getting their old presidential salaries — again, where’s the evidence? We’re waiting ..

About U of PHX prices — UoP follows government prices. If government lower its prices, UoP would lower its prices.

About AAUP union and other claims about the effect on tenure on wages — ever heard of a market economy? Those in demand can demand — and get — tenure and other benefits. Those not in demand cannot make demands. Life goes on.

And if you think tenure does NOT raise long-term costs — why aren’t you in favor of eliminating tenure, just as good-effort attempt to LOWER student costs?

The issue with education is that of all human services. Demand is endless, while resources are limited. There is not an endless amount of money for education — get over it. Lenin and Mao promised better lives — look on that turned out.

To the tenured: you are employees, not gods. If you are happy — great. If you are not — no one is forcing you to stay. You can either do your job without whining, or make others miserable.

In any event — others will do what they can make life better for debt-burdened students. You can either help — or be the target of a growing ‘push-back.’ Your decision — live with it.

R.A.S., at 8:30 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

Blame the Faculty?

The writer of the article has either a hidden agenda –think political— or is awfully ignorant about what a university is all about. The worth of a university is measured by the quality of its faculty. Brick and mortar, the library facilities, gym complexes, or may I add superfluous overpaid administrators don’t make a university reputation. If the faculty think they are the university— well they are. That said, for a university to function optimally it needs students, staff, administrators , funds etc. Take the faculty out from that enterprise you don’t have a university but something else.

Ed Jobs, at 9:20 pm EDT on April 6, 2006

The costs of tenure

First, as several commenters have pointed out, tenure is an important factor in the decision to become an academic. Without tenure, many talented people would pursue other careers.

Second, college professors do not have the job mobility of doctors or lawyers or businesspeople. When I first went on the market, there were no jobs in my field in California, New York, or Massachusetts. Oddly, there were three in Louisianna and four in Colorado.

Third, even reasonably productive mid-career professors tend not to get other academic jobs if they lose tenure, as they did at Skidmore.

Fourth, it is easy to see why the Bush administration would like to get rid of tenure. Tenure gives professors the freedom to make pests of themselves writing about inconvenient topics like global warming.

Fifth, most of my colleagues in the CUNY system work at least sixty hours a week. Most of us are doing not only research and teaching and mentoring but also a lot of administrative work.

Sixth, the dichotomy between research and teaching is a false one. Real researchers teach an entirely different set of skills than non-researchers do, even in general education courses.

Seventh, it is completely false to suggest that tenure is inconsistent with a free market. Why do the best law firms, management consulting firms, accounting firms, and medical practices all grant partners the equivalent of tenure? Because without the promise of partnership, they cannot attract the most talented people.

I don’t understand why fans of the free market feel obliged to do away with tenure. Students already have a choice between schools which have tenure and schools which don’t. Let the market decide. Those who feel that the University of Phoenix offers a better education or a better bargain than UCLA can vote with their feet.

Matthew Greenfield, Associate Professor at CUNY, at 12:20 am EDT on April 7, 2006

Blaming the Faculty

Response to RAS

You asked for evidence that former university presidents are receiving their old salaries (when they return to the faculty). Well, here’s one documented example: the Univesity of Kentucky pays former president Charles Wethington approx $250K per year plus benefits. Ironically, his faculty appointment was relocated to the Lexington Community College due to a systemwide split — and then again to a new entity, the KCTCS. He teaches no courses. He is listed as Associate Professor. I was wrong on one thing — his salary now actually is higher than when he was president.

I believe also that former President of the U of Michigan, James Duderstadt, returned to the faculty — not in his original appointment in engineering — but in the higher education program of the School of Education.

The former president of Rollins College in Florida has an endowed professorship in higher education — even though this is a bachelor degree granting institution that I do not think has any graduate degree programs.

I think my claim is a fairly common practice at universities. I hope you will respond. Thanks

john thelin, professor at university of kentucky, at 9:10 am EDT on April 7, 2006

Cost Saving Faculty

The question arises over and over on whether adjunct faculty, which can be hired for next to nothing, with sometimes few credentials and little investment in the institution is better for the clients (the students) in the long term because they will have lower tuition expenses.

Recently, a public school district in California was identified as hiring substitutes rather than full – time faculty, especially in the mathematics and science fields, in order to save money. One class was noted as having more than 12 different substitutes in one year for a science class. The parents were outraged. Why? This less expensive form of teaching had a negative impact on the children. Students did not develop relationships with their teachers, the subs had different backgrounds of experience, the teachers did not feel a connection or responsibility to the students or the institution, etc. Imagine if this became the accepted standard for elementary and secondary schools across the country-no full-time faculty.

Shouldn’t parents and students who are paying for higher education expect more from their education then they did in primary schools? Shouldn’t they be able to expect teachers who are engaged in the institution, are willing to engage the students, become mentors, have strong credentials and constantly striving to improve their skills and increase their knowledge in their field? Would we want a professor of medicine, teaching our next generation of surgeons, who is not aware of the newest treatments, technology, and ethical issues? When students choose their schools, they are choosing their faculty and investing in their education. Faculty support should be the last item cut in a university budget.

It is in the best interest of an institution to hire full-time faculty who will be impacted by the success of the school and feel like their employer has an interest in their individual success. They will also be more likely to be involved in activities outside of the classroom to engage their students and make improvements for the institution. They will also get to know the students and form positive mentor relationships with them.

sa, at 3:10 pm EDT on April 7, 2006

So .. take it to the Louisville Courier-Journal

” .. the Univesity of Kentucky pays former president ..”

Sir: my guess is, in his presidential contract, that matter was addressed. That makes it a board of trustees issue.

Again — if you are so upset by this, you will accomplish more by using the local news media to attack the problem. Talk is cheap — actions speak louder than words. Looking forward to you, doing something about this.

As to the other examples — you seem uncertain. If you actually try to involve the local news media, you’ll have to be a lot more certain of your facts.

Separately: about the K-12 class with multiple sub’s. That sounds like a teachers’ union contract issue. That would never happen at the college level — contracts are for at least one semester — you’d never get six sub’s for one class.

As for this — “If for-profit schools and community colleges are the model to be admired, then why does everyone want to go to Harvard instead?”

Obviously, because Harvard enrolls 0.001% of the U.S. student population, while U. of PHX became the largest single provider of higher ed as the Public Education Monopoly sat on its behind. UoP is not perfect — but at least they did something, rather than nothing.

R.A.S., at 12:35 pm EDT on April 8, 2006

Sorry I missed this one

Since faculty only represent less than 20% of the staff at all institutions except community colleges, how is they are the cause of high prices?? Their salaries fall inbetween administrators and support staff. As for the damned business model, bring it on. I would like to see it applied to the administrators. And, if you wish, to teaching. My courses are always packed, and the tuition generates more than my salary. I have brought in more grant money in the last twenty years than I have received in salary. My reward? Average slalry increases that have not kept up with inflation. Yet our administration thinks we are over-tenured.

better late, at 10:55 am EDT on April 10, 2006

It’s all about what you think higher ed is for

If you think postsecondary education is to crank out degrees as efficiently as possible, by all means, let’s go with the U of Phoenix/Atlas Shrugged model. I mean, gosh, those horrible, messy things like inquiry, argument, research, data—those are so pre-global economy. Just ask Tom Friedman.

Selling education like it’s a pair of tennis shoes means treating students like boutique customers and faculty like hash slingers. It’s a stupid idea that just won’t die. Why we as a culture want to make our graduates less able to think critically, deal well with ambiguity, and be able to pull from a broad swath of subject areas to live and work—it’s utterly beyond me.

CMW, at 5:40 am EDT on April 26, 2006