From an email I received today from my old college Dean:

“I am concerned about a giving trend I have been witnessing in recent years, and I hope you can help. The percentage of alumni supporting Olin has been falling. In the year 2000, 31% of our alumni supported Olin. This fiscal year, only about 17% of our alumni have made a gift, and the downward trajectory has been consistent in the intervening years. This is not just an Olin trend, it is an industry-wide one, and I’d like to turn this statistic around. I want Olin to be an exception to this trend. Alumni participation in giving matters to our rankings. It matters to our students. It matters to me.”

Should read:

“I am concerned about a giving trend I have been witnessing in recent years, and I hope you can help. The percentage of alumni hired for jobs that utilize skills learned at school and pay adequately has been falling. In the year 2000, 31% of our alumni supported Olin. This fiscal year, only about 17% of our alumni have made a gift, and the downward trajectory has been consistent in the intervening years. This is not just an Olin trend, it is an industry-wide one, and I’d like to turn this statistic around. I want Olin to be an exception to this trend. Alumni participation in giving matters to our rankings. It matters to our students. It matters to me.”

The title of this particular message was “Alumni Participation Matters.”  You’d hope that “Alumni Success Matters” would be a far more pressing and salient issue.