http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/david-e-shaw-college-donations.html Sept 28, 2019 "One Wall Street billionaire and the ultimate college hedge." "...Starting in 2011, when the oldest of their three children was about two years away from applying to college, the Shaw Family Endowment Fund donated $1 million annually to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford and at least $500,000 each to Columbia and Brown. The pattern persisted through 2017, the most recent year for which public filings are available, with a bump in giving to Columbia to $1 million a year in 2016 and 2017. The foundation, which lists Kobliner as president and Shaw as treasurer and secretary, has also contributed $200,000 annually to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2013. The total donations for “general” purposes across seven years and seven elite schools are $37.3 million, which represents 62 percent of the foundation’s giving over that period. At minimum, experts in higher-education fund-raising say, Shaw and Kobliner’s strategy improved their children’s chances of getting into at least one of the country’s top universities. At best, it would allow them to choose whichever blue-chip school they preferred, making selecting a college as easy as ordering from a take-out menu..."
this - with everything priced in, including the 'befriending' part.... complete waste of money. https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/the-college-solution/2011/03/01/the-ivy-league-earnings-myth
It's really absurd that universities enjoy non-profit status. One of my alma maters has a $25B endowment, and they still get to issue tax free bonds! Neither they or religious organizations have any business getting a free ride by not paying taxes, and both this behavior and a lot of other unintended consequences would go away if we revoked their non-profit status.
I disagree entirely. This mess started when "debt" became The Thing for college funding -- mid '80s. Just check out any graph of college tuition against prevailing inflation -- and see when grants got murdered and "debt" became The Thing. The bad behavior to which you refer (and I'm sure we'd all agree on the particulars!) has nothing to do with profit-making or tax status, but everything to do with having ZERO enforced price discipline. They hide the cost from you, and then pile debt into your "Aid Package" because it makes it all look cheap and easy. Just click on your favorite ".edu" and tell me how many clicks does it take you, to find their tuition+room+board costs. You can't even APPLY these days, without having your "FFAF" filed. A total asymmetry between what you'll receive, and what it will cost you. Want to see them reap what they've sewn? Just check out the mirror-ing moves to Alumni Giving over the past 30 years -- it's gone down as tuition-funded-by-debt has gone up. Why not go somewhere else? Cuz the somewhere else (thus far) will do the same thing. [Indiana's Purdue University -- under former (White House) Budget Director and former two-term Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels -- has moved in the opposite direction, and is seeing enrollment and entrance exam scores climb. "Hint!"]
I don't disagree that there are a lot more problems and eliminating non-profit status won't solve all or even many of them. I just don't see non-profit status as in any way justifiable as it's own, admittedly perhaps small, issue. Especially when universities can literally risk free arb by the fact that they're issuing tax free bonds at rates less than they're getting from endowment money invested in treasuries!
Well at least they donated and I suspect the universities were happy about it. They could have blown the money on ships....vacations..gambling...drugs...and other such things.
This. Graduated a few years ago from one of those listed above and folks can judge this however they want, but here’s a story. Grew up comfortably in the South. I don’t need to paint too vivid of a picture here but at school I met some other children of privilege and I learned the difference between “gonna pay estate tax” wealth and “Swiss bank” wealth. Meeting my friends parents was really rewarding for me. They Bud Foxed me. Took me out to the hamptons, took me upstairs on 57th street. Again, judge me if you want, but was 20 years old and I saw there was another level of wealth beyond big house on the golf course and that lit a fire in me. They may rescind my degree for saying that was one of the more rewarding aspects of undergrad but oh well. Send your kids. They might see something that changes their world view. They might hate it, they may want in, but renouncing the Ivy’s because the wealthy kids got in is both academically and experientially an incorrect knee jerk.