Richard Mo: Spend on what counts

Exhibit A: the $140 million New York Yankees, the team that America loves to hate. This storied team, with 26 World Championships and with the highest payroll in baseball, dwarfs its competitors. They can spend $20 million for a middle reliever and $24 million for an outfielder who has never fulfilled his promise. And of course, they can dump $189 million on their supermodel-dating shortstop.

Exhibit B: The Wharton School, the school that non-Whartonites love to hate and decry as a den of evil and greed. It is Penn's crown jewel, the school that all the other schools are invariably measured against.

Later this week, administrators will celebrate the official opening of Wharton's latest achievement, the $140 million Huntsman Hall, proclaimed by Wharton as "the world's most advanced academic center for management education." The building is a testament to how Wharton figuratively and literally towers over the rest of Penn -- the same way the Yankees do over baseball.

To most, the $140 million pedestals that Wharton and the Yankees stand on are sufficiently daunting. But what is even scarier is the realization that they are playing by the rules, albeit arguably unfair, of their respective systems. The Yankees have large media and licensing revenues that support their spending habits. Wharton's spending is financed by its unique moneymaking division and a $425 million fundraising effort, grandiosely named the Campaign for Sustained Leadership.

Interested in how Wharton spends its money, I decided to do some investigating.

My first call went to KI, the supplier of the podiums for each of Huntsman's 48 classrooms. A salesman quoted a price of $4,107 for the "Wharton Lectern," but he added that the touch screen was not included.

The Crestron TPS-6000 panel costs an extra $8,250. And the network accessories that connect to the podium would be extra as well. Total podium cost: $15,000, give or take a thousand.

Next, I contacted SMART Technologies, which makes the electronic whiteboards that adorn each of the 57 group study rooms. I was told that each fetches a cool $1,399.

Sensing even more hefty price tags to come, I stopped. My phone bill was starting to add up.

It is not my place on this page to judge the judiciousness of the spending. After all, the wise Wharton administrators have decided that these gadgets are needed for a top notch business education.

Because of their large egos and equally large checkbooks, I have a certain amount of dislike for both Wharton and the Yankees. But I would be lying if I said that I didn't envy their success. The idealist in me wants my Mets to sign All-Stars at each position and to attend class in an expensive, cutting-edge building. But the more practical side realizes the futility.

It would be a huge folly for the non-Wharton schools to try to emulate Wharton's business model. They will never have the same financial resources -- thus, they will always be capped by limited budgets and mistakes have the potential to be debilitating.

While the other students would like a building that even Whartonites will ooh and aah at, doing so will only profoundly hurt their education. The rest of the University needs to leverage its limited resources and improve the fundamentals of their schools.

I know that the History Department will be benefited a thousand times more through increased library archives than through escalators in College Hall. What is going to help English majors is not the installation of 366 public computer terminals in Bennett Hall, but the addition of more learned and engaging professors to teach Pound and Whitman. Biologists will appreciate labs with modern equipment much more than they will ever appreciate a $15,000 podium.

The rest of Penn needs come to the realization that they are never going to be able to beat Wharton at the game it has perfected. Trying to trump Wharton by building flashier facilities only guarantees failure.

Looking at the Texas Rangers is enough to realize that throwing money around has can result in a laughingstock, even with a nice ballpark and the best player in the game.

And sometimes, the $140 million Yankees stumble badly. Sometimes, the Angels, one of baseball's cursed teams, embarrass the sport's premiere franchise and make it all the way to the World Series.

No dazzle, no shine. Just wise spending and strong fundamentals.

Richard Mo is a senior History and Economics major from Fresh Meadows, NY.

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