July 18, 2007

Help Harvard Spend Its Endowment

By UD

Where Most Needed is a blog that follows what it calls “the charity industry.” Its author, in a recent post, notices what UD and other observers have noticed — that more and more people are beginning to question the grotesque disparity between a few American universities endowed with billions and billions and billions of dollars, and most of the rest of the country’s campuses, struggling with expenses.

Harvard, for instance, has a thirty billion dollar endowment, and, judging by the profuse glossy mailings UD’s husband, a Harvard grad, gets from the school, they’re desperate for more.

There’s no way to justify a university accumulating the GNP of a mid-sized country; nor is there any way to justify using your own money to buff up those billions.

It’s time for the rest of us to help Harvard clear its conscience and dispose of its excess. UD invites her readers to send suggestions as to worthy university recipients of Harvard’s long-overdue charitable largesse.

She’ll get the ball rolling with the following suggestion, inspired by this Chicago Tribune story (excerpts follow):

“Last month, when the World Monuments fund released its new watch list of the world’s most endangered cultural sites, one of the biggest surprises on the list was ... Florida Southern College [designed by Frank Lloyd Wright].

...Wright designed a college campus? In Florida?

...Florida Southern boasts the largest single-site collection of the master architect’s buildings — 12 structures, spanning the important later decades of his life...

...’We are a small college with a small treasury and a small endowment,’ [explained Florida Southern’s president, in describing why it’s been so difficult to maintain the buildings].

...The 1.5 miles of esplanades are being repaired with funds from a $1.6 million state grant. And a mix of private and public funds is paying for the $700,000 restoration of Wright’s Water Dome, a large fountain in the center of the campus.

But the serious fund-raising lies ahead...”

Harvard’s grant of ten million dollars to Florida Southern will allow them to complete this important architectural restoration work.

Comments

I’m wondering — while your school’s endownment is about 1/30th of Harvards — where GW’s charitable contribution is? Despite being much much smaller, a billion dollars could still go a long way, and as an added benefit you wouldn’t be passing this responsibility to act on to anyone else.

Otter, at 2:10 pm EDT on July 18, 2007

I was a graduate student- in a hard science department- at Harvard in the 80’s. While I was there it became the fashion for senior hires to demand (and get!) there own bathroom facilities. One faculty member even got a private shower!

I vowed then that Harvard would never get a donation from me! An institution that has the resources to so indulge the vanities of its professors does not need my money. I give my donations to the community college where I got my start. They appreciate my $1,200 annual gift much more than Harvard ever would, and- what is really relevant- they put it to good use.

Not that I am ungrateful to Harvard: I got an education there that has led to a lot of career success: I am a professor and department chair at a major research university (but a public one). However, as I struggle to compete with the privates in terms of salaries, job conditions, etc., and as I witness the travails of even poorer institutions, I have to ask myself the question: Wouldn’t Harvard (and Princeton, and Yale, and...) do more to improve higher education in the US by encouraging their donors to think about other institutions to send their money? It’s a pipe dream, I know, but an attractive one nonetheless.

Midwetern_Rationalist, at 1:10 pm EDT on July 19, 2007

“I vowed then that Harvard would never get a donation from me!”

I’m also a Harvard grad and I’ve made the same vow myself. Never in a million years.

Dr. Veritas, at 6:05 am EDT on July 20, 2007

Endowment$

Someone should study the cost of universities’ fundraising activities. How much money is being spent cultivating donors? (Yes, the salaries of other charity directors are also sometimes scandalous, but...)

Endowment$, at 1:00 pm EDT on July 25, 2007