91–100 of 267 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention vast hospital networks~ in a number of cities, universities run major or even the primary hospital network in the city.
How do you suppose that med students get the required on the job training (aka residency) otherwise? Teaching hospitals are a very necessary thing in the medical field.
For more about this, read: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/05/29/...
> [T]here is one misimpression that people seem to have, that might as well be corrected before any hasty actions are taken: the purpose of Harvard is not to educate students. If anything, its primary purpose is to produce research and scholarly work. Nobody should be surprised that the gigantic endowment isn’t put to use in providing top-flight educational experiences for a much larger pool of students; it could be, for sure, but that’s not the goal. The endowment is there to help build new facilities, launch new research initiatives, and attract the best faculty. [...]
> Don’t believe me? Here is the test: when was the last time Harvard made a senior tenure offer to someone because they were a world-class educator, rather than a world-class researcher? Not only is the answer “never,” the question itself is somewhat laughable.
> This is not a value judgment, nor is it a particular complaint about Harvard. It’s true of any top-ranked private research university, including Caltech. (Note that Caltech has over 1200 faculty members and fewer than 900 undergraduate students.) And it is not a statement about universities in general; many large public universities, and smaller liberal-arts schools, take education very seriously as a primary mission. This is by no means incompatible with being a top-notch research institution — the physics departments at places like Berkeley or UC Santa Barbara would be the envy of almost any private research university. But those places also take their educational mission very seriously, which Harvard, honestly, does not.
The issue is not so much that schools invest in hedge funds (the endowment managers are just trying to maximize returns), but that the endowments pay out such a small percentage of their funds each year to support research, financial aid, and everything else. Harvard pays out only 4-6% of the endowment yearly. On their huge endowment, if they increased the payout by .5%, they would have a whole lot more to spend on w…
This is incredibly shortsighted. The point of an endowment is not to pay it off, the point is that the endowment persists indefinitely, and the interest / returns fund operations. If people wanted to contribute directly to a university, they can. Instead they're contributing to the endowment. Respect that choice. It's pathetic that universities have actually set up a sustainable source for funding scholarships etc in…
It's not the cut and dry issue you seem to be implying.
What's more remarkable is that people voluntarily donate money to them. Why would you do that? These institutions are not in need of cash by any means. And if you are going to be charitable, there are organizations where that money can do far more good, like the top Givewell charities.
A bit tangential, but don't donate to Ivy Leagues. I get that you might feel a sense of pride in having graduated from the school, but with a 11 digit endowment, you can rest assured that the school will be there for future students in perpetuity. Rather, give to state schools or community colleges or really, any other school. Help them serve students of all economic backgrounds, not just the elite. The most importan…
I agree with you, but many people see that as a plus when donating. If I give $x to an organization that desperately needs it, it will be spent immediately. If I give $x to an endowment, it will sit there in perpetuity, providing investment income to the organization for decades or centuries. Ben Franklin understood this and left a small amount of money (1,000 pounds) to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia in his w…
The article title "...with Schools Attached" misses an important fact about most universities. The purpose of most universities is to engage in scientific research. They are not schools, not primarily. They are chiefly research institutions that, yes, have schools attached. For more about this, read: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/05/29/... > [T]here is one misimpression that people seem to hav…
Is it just me or does the article fail to mention/estimate/discuss how much money the universities received _from_ hedge funds? It repeats over and over again how much the schools _paid_ in managers' fees, but if the return was several times that amount, then I guess I don't see the problem.
It's the same old story everywhere: Do you stick the money in a 0.2% fee index fund and ride the wave, or do you spend 20% of your returns on fees in the hope you're going to get lucky?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you, but many people see that as a plus when donating. If I give $x to an organization that desperately needs it, it will be spent immediately. If I give $x to an endowment, it will sit there in perpetuity, providing investment income to the organization for decades or centuries. Ben Franklin understood this and left a small amount of money (1,000 pounds) to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia in his w…
Not to be flippant, but, it's a good thing Ben Franklin wasn't born in Zimbabwe!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't really care if universities hire hedge managers to manage their endowment, but it's absurd that schools with multibillion dollar endowments still charge tuition. Yale has ~12,000 students and a $26 billion endowment. Tuition is ~$45,000 per student. $45,000 * 12,000 = $540 million. They can't spend 2%(540/26,000) of their endowment per year on free tuition? What is this money for? It's mainly a tax on rich…
I walked out of MIT with $100K in student loans, because I had the combination of 'parents who make too much money' and 'parents who had five kids and did not adequately save for their children's education'. I'm all for soaking the rich, but how is that fair? I was apparently rich by association, and it was pretty upsetting to see kids who were ostensibly poorer than I was get a substantially easier start in life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't really care if universities hire hedge managers to manage their endowment, but it's absurd that schools with multibillion dollar endowments still charge tuition. Yale has ~12,000 students and a $26 billion endowment. Tuition is ~$45,000 per student. $45,000 * 12,000 = $540 million. They can't spend 2%(540/26,000) of their endowment per year on free tuition? What is this money for? It's mainly a tax on rich…
I walked out of MIT with $100K in student loans, because I had the combination of 'parents who make too much money' and 'parents who had five kids and did not adequately save for their children's education'. I'm all for soaking the rich, but how is that fair? I was apparently rich by association, and it was pretty upsetting to see kids who were ostensibly poorer than I was get a substantially easier start in life.
(Or maybe they're better at filling in FAFSA? My father is a self-taught accountant who later went pro (incl. classes/tests etc), but may have been too honest.)