Sell Watches To You

I’M one of 10 children in my family. My mother, a nurse, was always busy around the house or taking care of a new baby. As the second-oldest child and the oldest girl, I became a surrogate parent to many of my siblings.
I’d iron on Saturday mornings, baby-sit and grocery-shop. It just happens in large families. It taught me to be a good manager and to have patience.

I thought I’d be a policewoman, so I studied criminal justice and philosophy at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I. I graduated in 1981. I didn’t mesh with one of my professors, who told me that I’d never amount to anything. That motivated me to succeed.

Then I decided that I’d be a lawyer, so I completed a paralegal program in Philadelphia to get my feet wet. Then, instead of going to law school, I got a job in New York at a company that manufactured copiers and other items. Six weeks later, the company filed for bankruptcy.

I led the internal bankruptcy administration process and worked with a consultant the company hired. In 1985, I joined her bankruptcy administration company. She trusted me to do a large part of the work while she traveled. Four years later, at the age of 29, I left and started my own company. I held three part-time jobs while trying to line up clients. At one point, I rolled coins and hocked my jewelry so I could eat.

I arranged to give a presentation to a company in the steel industry in western Pennsylvania. Flying was out of the question; I barely had money for gasoline to drive there. I tossed my files and my I.B.M. PC into the back of my Honda and drove all night. That company became my first client.

Logan & Company deals mostly with Chapter 11 reorganizations. Companies usually call us when they’ve missed a debt payment and want to negotiate with their banks and creditors. We serve as a repository for their data; keep track of their customers, employees, bondholders and creditors; and mail them the appropriate documents.

I’m dyslexic, and I wasn’t reading by fourth grade. A nun at my parochial school worked with me and taught me to decode words. I’ve had to find ways to compensate as an adult, like developing my memory, which have served me well in this business.

The bankruptcy process has some strict deadlines. In 1995, we sent a 2,000-page document to a California lawyer to file with the court on our client’s behalf. The document should have reached California by a certain Friday, but didn’t. If the document was filed late, our client could be heavily fined. We needed another plan.

I divided the document into stacks of 25 pages and started walking down the street. I knocked on the door of any business that I thought would have a fax machine and asked if I could use it. I distributed the document piecemeal along the streets of Hoboken, N.J., until the whole thing had been sent to the counsel in California. In those years, most fax machines didn’t work at a high speed, so it took all day, but the document arrived at court on time.

Another of my clients was a 100-year-old Southern manufacturing company that went bankrupt. Several generations of families had worked there. Because of competition overseas, the company couldn’t recover and had to move from Chapter 11, which allows reorganization, to Chapter 7. It liquidated assets and closed its doors.

Many lives had been wrapped up in this organization, and the community was like a ghost town after the closing. Cases like that make me want to do all I can to help people spring back.

The UK has lost its edge as a world leader in providing higher education, one of the most authoritative international studies has revealed.

It has plummeted from fourth place to 15th in less than a decade in the percentage of graduates it produces – being overtaken by countries such as Poland and Portugal in the process.

The study's findings prompted dire warnings from lecturers and vice-chancellors' representatives, who said the UK faced relegation from the top league from which it would struggle to recover. The report, by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), comes just before a major government review of university finance by the former BP boss Lord Browne and cuts in higher education funding of up to 35 per cent.

The review is said to be moving towards introducing more of a university marketplace through higher fees for students – which would mean lifting the current cap of £3,225 to at least £7,000. Research evidence shows that the majority of students – about two-thirds – would be deterred from going to university if fees reached that level.

Andreas Schleicher, of the OECD's indicators and analysis division, said: "Fewer people with qualifications will mean a less successful economy. Cutting education is going to cut the tax returns of the future. For many years the UK was very much at the forefront [of higher education provision]. But now you do not see that competitive advantage."

The report revealed that the UK's nosedive was not a result of it producing fewer graduates – rather that other countries had expanded their higher education provision at a faster rate. Figures showed the UK was investing less of its Gross Domestic Product in higher education – 1.3 per cent – than the OECD average of 1.5 per cent.

Reaction to the report emphasised the dire financial straits in which universities could soon find themselves. Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, which represents 20 of the country's leading research institutions including Oxford and Cambridge, said: "While our universities are bracing themselves for a period of austerity and uncertainty, other nations are rightly pumping billions of dollars into their institutions.

"If our universities are hit again in the comprehensive spending review by another wave of cuts, we could well be relegated to a lower division of higher education quality from which we would struggle ever to recover."

A survey carried out by the National Union of Students (NUS) and HSBC revealed that 70 per cent of students felt that fees of up to £7,000 a year would put them off going to university. Aaron Porter, president of the NUS, said: "Student finances are already at breaking point and this is clear evidence of the need to do away with the damaging and unpopular fees system."

However, the feeling within the Browne review is that universities would introduce differential fees rather than immediately charging the maximum amount available to them. It has all but rejected the idea of a graduate tax. Its findings could well fuel a political split between the coalition partners, as the Liberal Democrats opposed any fees increases during their general election campaign.

drive from www.independent.co.uk