Income Inequality – College Edition
In a new post at Minding The Campus, Jonathan Marks points out that America’s most elite schools get the lion’s share when it comes to fundraising dollars.
In College Fundraising, the Rich Get Richer
College fundraising was up 9 percent last year, says the Council for Aid to Education, but there’s a worrisome statistic: 17 percent of the $34 billion raised went to ten already wealthy institutions. The poorest of the ten is NYU, which already has an endowment of about $3 billion, 28th richest among American colleges and universities.
Inequality among colleges and universities seems to be increasing. Commentators on the left, right, and center now question whether massive endowments like Harvard’s, a staggering $30 billion plus, serve higher education well. Felix Salmon and others consider Harvard “a hedge fund with an educational institution attached, the educational institution more than paying for itself in the tax exemption it confers upon the entire endowment.” Some, like Salmon, have called for revoking higher education’s tax exemptions; others have called for taxing the wealthiest endowments; and still others have called on the best endowed colleges and universities to spend more on improving higher education nationally. While they wait to see if any of that will happen, donors should consider whether flinging more dollars at the mountains of cash on which their favorite grantees sit will do much good.
$100 Million to Diversify Penn’s Faculty
I understand that alumni will want to give to their own alma maters. One can’t argue with gratitude. And for some donors, it will be nicer to have one’s name on a bench at Harvard than on a building at Eastern Something State. Still, pouring one’s charitable contributions into already flush institutions can have diminishing marginal returns.
Consider the University of Pennsylvania, which raised over $500 million this year. Last year, its diversity efforts were in the news. The University has committed 100 million new dollars, $20 million per year over 5 years, to diversify its faculty.
Comments
How come they are never asked to diversify the football teams?
They’ll waste this money to do a search for an Eskimo biologist, or a Tibetan music professor, seeking a skin color, sex or ethnicity instead of seeking the best, brightest person to teach our kids. For the totalitarian left, nothing to see here, move along. Bah!