LancesWorld.com Journal

Today is graduation day at UC Berkeley. That means that classes are over and it's time for summer break. What am I going to do with my three months of summer? Oh wait, that's right... I work here, I don't get a summer break. My how I do miss a good summer break. It almost makes me want to become a professional student just so I can have summers off. Or maybe a teacher of some kind... perhaps down the road, just perhaps.

Speaking of graduation, as at many Universities, Notre Dame included, it is customary for the Cal senior class to leave a gift to their new Alma Mater. At Cal, this has been the tradition since 1874, when the senior class left a gift of $48.10 for Books. $48.10, you ask? That's a tiny sum! Perhaps it sounds a tiny sum. After all, if the Class of 2006 left that gift, with a predicted donor base of 1800 students, it would represent a generous contribution of only 2.67 cents per graduating senior. The goal of this year's senior class is to raise $60,000 for Cal, an average of just over $33.33 per student.

Now it's time to have some fun with numbers - you know how I love math.

The question is this - assuming that this year's class reaches its goal of $60,000, which class was more generous? First, it is important to realize that the value of $1 in 1874 and the value of $1 in 2006 are very different. A quick Google search yielded a wonderful table of conversion factors to convert 2006 dollars into dollars of any year starting in 1800 (and estimated values into 2016), and vice versa. Looking at this table, I discovered that $1 in 2006 is equivalent to about 5.9 cents in 1874. If you're working ahead of me here, you'll already have calculated, then, that $48.10 in 1874 is roughly equivalent to $815.25 in 2006. Wow, still not very much, right? $815 vs $60,000?

But there's more to the story. This year's senior class has over 1,800 students. How large was the class in 1874? I asked myself this question, and set out to find an answer. It took me about 3 minutes to discover that the graduating class of 1873 had 12 students. I conservatively estimated that the class of 1874, then, would have had about 14 students. It could have been more or less, but not by much. At 14 students, each would have given $3.44, which is equivalent to $58.23 in 2006 dollars. Adjusting for class size, we see that this would require the Class of 2006 to raise $104,818 to be only just as generous as the Class of 1874.

Way to go, Class of 1874!