That can only be liquidated and used for the stated endowed purpose.
Yes it was intended as an attention grabber.
If it is realistic it all it is realistic in that what I described is theeffect.
Imagine filling 100 students in a Soc 101 classroom, each paying over $3,000.
Then doing that 3x for each professor.
$1 milllion per professor per semester.
Obviously this is using “education” as a cash cow to fund something other than education . . . . whatever the university’s true priority is. The net effect is no different than if the professorate actually believed those attention-grabbing statements.
So your complaint is that people are donating for expensive buildings instead of what Gaius considers “Reasonable priced ones”?
yes of course it’s not an attack on higher education. You just believe the people of higher education are… let me recall…
“Blood sucking leeches.”
Certainly nothing personal there.
Yes, the College development office calls some guy and says
“Please donate we are tryign to create a $1 million endowed chair in XYZ studies.”
Donor says:
“Sure use it for that use it to keep tution low, I was gonna donate no matter what.”
College says:
tis is wahtwe are gonna ear mark it for. We ahve to ear mark it this way or else in the future, future colelge administartors might use if for someting stupid like lowering tuition."
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TRUE STORY
When my alma mater called after substantial discussion I was able to donate and chose my own earmark, but it took some discussion. The poor hapless student on the other end was totally unprepared for that idea, that it should be used for whatIwanted not for whateer was on the script. (I insisted it be used to buy a round of drinks at the the on campus bar. LOL)
Ask me what I think of the post office, the healthcare system etc.
They all run on the smae models and they are allginat money pits.
No I don’t hate the miltary nor do I think we should get rid of it.
No I don’t hate the hospitals nor do I think we should get rid of them.
No I don’t hate the natonal parks nor do I think we should get rid of them.
No I don’t hate higher ed, nor do I think we should get rid of it.
I think all of them are spaghetti bowls of problems, in almost exactly the same ways and for the same reasons. . . . wait do we need another carrier group?
Is He’s Not Here considered the campus bar?
I think I still have a tab open there from a long weekend in the 1990’s. )
Edit: nevermind, I was confusing Chapel Hill and State College. But I did get dragged into bars at both locations)
What business is it on yours what some rich person gives his money to a university for?
You claimed they college was legally prohibitted from using endowment and donations to keep titon low.
I am describing exactly how it actuallyworks.
college:
- hire one non-teaching employee per student (each student has to pay a lot for that)
- command that the faculty spend 2/5 of its time doing research . . . research it would rather not do (hence the need for “publish or perish clauses”)
- raise millions that could be used toreduce tuition, intead use it to bild monuments
- AND FINALLY complain that “college costs so mcuh because we hve too many republicans in office. Honest, we have done everythign we can do to keep tuition low.”
No I didn’t.
I claimed they couldn’t use money given for specific endowments on whatever they pleased.
And they can’t.
The research funds the professor. The research funds the professor. The research funds the professor.
And there are many, many, MANY professors who would much prefer to do only research than teach - in fact, many do.
If your wish is strictly to teach, you can take a lecturer appointment at an R1 / R2 or you can teach at an undergraduate college that doesn’t have a research arm, of which there are dozens if not hundreds around the US.
They establish their priorities (a shiny monument.)
They call and ask a bunch of donors for moeny.
They choose to lock that money donw prohbitting it from ever being used ro any other purpose.
They say (honestly) “Look the money is locked down we had to use it it build a new monument. We cannot use it for any other purpose.”
That’s how it works.
With all due respect, it seems to me you are describing a cartoon version of university operations.
Every professor I know in our town university is working on their true passions. They are all top of field kind of people who are where they are specifcly because they want to study what they are studying.
Publish or perish refers only to rising through the ranks. They all have tenure. there is no such thing as a publish or perish clause in contracts.
Universities don’t say no to money - crazy right? and sure, it is true that they expand, and raise money for thse expansions, but it’s a weird thing to complain about…as long as they aren’t using tax payer money, who cares?
And at the end of it, they have another asset that attracts the best and brightest from all over the world to do cutting edge research. often these assets (new campuses, buildings, dorms) mean more seats for the upcoming classes…
A soc 101 class with 100 students (often taught by a grad student)
generates $3,000 x 100 students = $300,000 per section.
A professor “teaches” 3 sections per semester x2 semesters = $1.8 million
FROM the students and FROM the taxpayer.
The classes are a cash cow.
Thay are no longer the purpose of the univerisity.
They are a souece of funds for the unviersity’s true priorities.
Colleges should go back totheir roots, when theyused other things to fund education. today education is treated like the yecky-but-necesary cash cow to fund other things.
Most research professors teach one class a year. Some don’t teach at all.
Who and where are these grad students teaching a 100-student intro course?
If it’s as easy as “enroll 100 students in a $3,000 course and cash the check” then why aren’t you out there creating Gaius university? Why are private, for profit schools failing?
As a mattr of fact . . . that is exactly precisely why so many private for profit institutions have sprung up.
Wheher it is package delivery, or health insuranc or hosptials orprison adminsitation or K-12 schooling the socialist model (gov/t and/or non profits) naturally creates great inefficiencies. (all of us on thei thread seem to know that.)
The fact that I am able to detail where those inefficienceis exsit in Higher ed
- is because I am familiar with higher ed in wasy I am not familiar with the post office or the park service.
- not becasue I think higher ed is worse, or even categorically differnt than theother socialized segments of our economy.
Get it?
I think we all concur that the socialist model, wherever it is used, is inefficient (rent price caps etc.)
From tme to time it cannot be avoided (natioanl defense and highway construction)
In other cases those inefficiencies beccome so great the private sector attempts to move-in and provide solutions.
And failed.
If there were high levels of economic rent being charged at Universities there would be successful private-sector universities being created to access these easy profits.
There are not. As a matter of fact, most attempts at for-profit private-sector colleges end in failure or fraud.
Tell me how hiring foreign workers especially IT get hired at your company and I will tell you in my experience on how they’re hired at a fortune 100 company.
Plus many universities will not care as much about and international students previous class work if they are going for a graduate degree because they get way more money for international students it has nothing to do with the smartest or most talented it has to do with money 
I’m currently the “foreign worker” at my company and I got hired by presenting an idea, demonstrating I’m the right person to do the work and getting hired to do it after we worked out the work visa questions.
Public universities get paid just as much by accepting out - of - state students (often more!) than they do taking international ones. If colleges were only concerned about money they’d only take out of state students and it wouldn’t be an academic question, it would simply be willingness to pay. But it’s not that way- Universities turn away far more paying students than they accept, and typically far more in-state than out of state.
Most private businesses fail period.
More so when there is a government-funded oligopoly actove working to sabotage them.
Are we at a point where:
- The post office should be repalced wiht a private for-profit? Probably
- Univnersities should be repalced by privzte for profits? Proabaly not, at least not on a wholesale basis.
What we really need in higher ed is a FUNDAMENTAL CULTURE CHANGE, one that is like a sea change. It starts with building a Chinese wall to make absolutely certain undergraduate ed is the recipient of funds from the university’s other arms and functions
They should get back to their roots.
I’ve got a few ideas how that can happen, but the general image I have is this (I hinted at it before.)
A LOT of colleges started by teaching classes (and doing almost zeroresearch) in church basements and K-12 schools and basiclaly doing every fists and last thing they could to keep costs down and provide a quality education at the lowest price possible.
When they have the look and feel AND CULTURE of Temple U and so many othe universities when they stareted out.
When they have the look and feel AND CULTURE of the 1862 frontier land grant univerisites
—> THEN they are doing what tey are supposed to do. Everything else is supposed to be just icing.
They need to stop being money pits and get back to their roots.
