Goodbye, Eli

Tears of nostalgia filled the Old Campus as Yale's class of 1992 tossed their tassels and bounded off to bright futures. Only later did they learn that President Benno Schmidt would be bounding along right after them. In a surprise announcement, Schmidt resigned his post after six troubled years to lead the Edison Project, Christopher Whittle's bold $2.5 billion effort to build 1,000 for-profit schools.

His news brought few tears. Schmidt's brief reign as steward of Yale's fortunes was rocky from the start. When the former dean of Columbia University Law School commuted between New Haven, Conn., and home with his filmmaker wife in New York City, Yalies jeered, "Where's Benno?" A bitter strike by graduate-student teaching assistants and recent recommendations for sharp cutbacks in faculty and the elimination of several academic departments damaged campus morale. But Schmidt, 50, managed to assuage some students by serenading them with country-and-western tunes on his guitar and to woo some alums with his impressive fund-raising talents; over the past two years he raised more than $600 million.

Schmidt originally likened his swap of tenured life for Whittle's risky project to "leaping into the abyss." But after bringing Yale to the precipice with a projected $15 million deficit, a scary vantage point should seem familiar. (See related stories beginning on page 69.)