Donna Shalala
Donna Shalala
Donna Edna Shalalawas the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. She was the president of the University of Miami, a private university in Coral Gables, Florida, from 2001 through 2015. Previously, she was the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1988 to 1993. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, by President George W. Bush in June 2008. Shalala currently serves as the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth14 February 1941
CountryUnited States of America
You go to college not only for the latest knowledge but also to meet people from different backgrounds. That's the genius of the American higher-education system compared with the Europeans'. We don't simply skim the elite.
I get to work at about 7:30 or 8 unless I have a breakfast meeting.
The economic dimension is very clear. I was at a dinner party, a mother got up, who's a very distinguished scientist, and said she had to get home and help her daughter with her homework. The two waiters, their faces changed. They were working their second jobs, they couldn't get home to help their kids with homework.
But for me, it is when a student has died. I find the death of a young person the most difficult and painful of times. To explain it to other young people, to see a bright future snuffed out, is just awful. I am haunted by those deaths.
Higher education is one of few areas where this country competes with the rest of the world and wins. The best of American higher education outstrips any in the world. Look where the rest of the world goes for higher education, for graduate degrees. They come here.
We're moving very rapidly into quality measures, so that Americans can control their own health care and have a better sense of which plan will provide them with quality health care,
We are living longer, and we need to live better.
We need to drive down requirements for the schools. In the 19th century, we increased the quality of the schools by higher education saying, 'You can't come in unless you have these skills, unless you've taken these courses.' We did that in Wisconsin when I was there, it helped to transform the secondary school system.
I have to admit, in January and February I was in an absolute fuzz. I had no one on board. It wasn't that I didn't know what I was doing, but we didn't have all the pieces put together.
Every year, I am reminded of the kids who aren't in the freshman class and aren't graduating. I remember every single one of them. That is the worst of times for me, to see the future snuffed out.
You don't want to destroy the energy that comes out of a campaign.
What you really remember at the beginning was that you have to throw a budget together. We made some terrible mistakes at the beginning in my own budget that took us at least a year to catch up on.
We have to mainstream everybody. No matter what their circumstances when they were growing up. Part of that is knowing that after they're finished with school, everybody in this country gets up and goes to work.
The government is fully capable of delivering services. Even complex services.