This is going to sound like a crazy conspiracy theory but I think it might be possible that Universities/academics performatively act like they're righteous warriors for justice and helping the "marginalized" while in reality their main interest is protecting the status quo which ensures their elite privilege and wealth. I know, it sounds crazy!
I've been thinking the same. Normal companies and people USE their savings and investments to get through bad times. That's the whole damn purpose of a cash reserve!!!!
Universities should do the same instead of complaining and begging for contributions.
You can buy a named professorship at U Penn for $1M - that’s an endowment. A fraction of that then is used to fund the activities of that chair and cannot be liquidated.
You're conflating specific endowments (donor gifts) for faculty chairs and professorships with a university's entire investment fund, generally known at universities as the endowment. Same word, different thing. (You can see in the report you linked that Penn calls its endowment the "Associated Investment Fund.")
If it worked as you described (a fund of $1M set-asides per endowed professorship), Penn would have more than 22,000 such professorships.
You’re correct I underestimated their endowment cost, they say specifically there are 8400 endowment not 22,000
Well quoting from their financial reports
The University of Pennsylvanias endowment totaled $20.7 billion as of June 30, 2022, an increase of $201 million over the past year. Penn's endowment comprises over 8,400 individual endowment funds benefiting the University's schools, centers, and Health System.
Endowments vary from 3M for some professorships to $750K for scholars it seems to vary by school.
At $3M that comes to 6,900 professorships, while they cite 8400 individual endowments.
That comes to around 2.4M per endowment not $1M
On their website:
Endowed Assistant Professorships attract and retain intermediate-level professors who already have established records of excellence. They position these rising starts for a senior-level appointment and provide invaluable funding for their research, travel, and graduate student assistants.
A gift of $1,500,000 endows an assistant faculty position.
I can see I’m not going to shake loose your conflation of the mechanism for funding a sponsored professorship (AN endowment) with the Associated Investment Fund (THE endowment). They’re different things.
But even with that matter unresolved, I think you can agree with the larger point, which is that it’s absurd for Penn to cry poverty when it’s sitting on a 22 BILLION dollar bank account (untaxed, on top of it all).
If it worked the way you’re saying, that would be like me saying sure, I may be high-net-worth on paper, but that money is really set aside for my vacations, the beach house, my retirement, and my stock-market investments. Therefore I need - no, deserve - taxpayer handouts so I can afford my day-to-day expenses.
I think it’s more like trust funders. Plenty of money, but access is constrained. I’m certainly not expert in trust law, and my Alma mater is the most heavily endowed per student of any worldwide, yet I get incessant requests. But we must both agree endowing a chair or professorship is not handing them operating cash
The takeaway for me is the shocking extent to which these allegedly "private" institutions are actually dependent on public dollars (your money and mine). It turns out that we pay for not just the subsidized student loans on the way in, not just the taxpayer bailout of student loan balances after the fact, not just grants for specific research projects, but the day-to-day operating costs and employee salaries of these "private" universities.
Universities have abandoned their mission of seeking truth and expanding knowledge in favor of enforcing illiberal ideologies and bizarre anti-truth belief systems (like transgenderism), and they're doing it on our dime. Since we're the ones actually paying for it we should be able to say that we deserve something better for our money. So they can tap the endowments. Or close up shop and we'll find out if we really miss them.
Great article. I've been thinking about this a lot too- like, a lot lefty academic types present themselves in the classroom as these radical iconoclasts- and all you have to do to get them to fold immediately is threaten their tenure. We saw this in Florida, where when DeSantis started cracking down on 'woke' professors, they just subtly changed their syllabi to fall in line and stay under the radar. These are people who lionize Malcolm X, and yet they're unwilling to take on even modest risk for what they supposedly believe in.
But it's even more nauseating at the institutional level. Some scholars have in fact been taking on professional risk to speak out against their universities and support student protestors, but their administrations, who pitch these schools as places to develop intellectual integrity, are falling all over themselves to be the fastest conformers, offering to nuke academic freedoms that have been won over a century. If Columbia agrees to put one of its departments in 'receivership' that will cross an absolutely insane red line. If these colleges are worth anything to the world, this is the time to show it. As Zaid points out, they are sitting on a massive pile of cash- if they're not willing to use that to defend their basic function, then what are these schools even for?
No man can become a woman. No man who went through male puberty no matter that he takes exogenous estrogen is a woman or should compete with women. Follow the science. This stuff is just fucking annoying.
If universities are an example of institutions on the "cutting-edge of progressive social and cultural issues", we're in real trouble. The economic structure of higher ed is based on exploration of labor--80-90% of the teaching is done by adjuncts/post-docs/graduate students, who are paid a pittance compared to professors and administrators. Universities oversupply Ph.D.'s to continually keep the labor supply in surplus, and is no different than business in this country encouraging immigration in order to keep wages down (H1B and undocumenteds). Universities may be emphasizing social and cultural issues but there is nothing progressive in immiserating the majority of your labor force.
The “568 Cartel” lawsuits, about top U.S. universities engaging in price-fixing over the past several decades, are ongoing and not getting enough press coverage. https://568cartel.com
The challenge is that the decision-makers on a question like that are not going to be lefty academics/students/administrators, but rather the fiscally and culturally conservative Board of Trustees. Board members tend to be the kind of top corporate execs who can cut 5-6 figure checks to their alma maters, and they will be a hard sell for passing up $400 million to make a statement, even if it's the right thing to do.
Now, if I were a student activist, this proposal here IS what I'd be pushing for, just acknowledging the college governance reality.
Heaven forbid that such institutions adopt institutional neutrality about political issues and return to focusing on fidelity to its core mission (Kalven Principles). That return to sanity (and public funding) is a step too far, I guess.
But it's somehow okey dokey if a Democratic admin pays for an ideological capture of it?
I'm advocating for a return of universities and colleges administrations to implementing institutional neutrality based on the Kalven Principles (U of Chicago). Your politically inspired comment simply demonstrates the ongoing problem.
Thanks for acknowledging the gray areas of this topic of trans women in sports. Yes, let's talk about it. But no, let's not just adopt a position because funds are being held ransom - especially, as you note, there are principled options.
They have an unrestricted endowment of ~8.5 billion dollars as per their own financial disclosures on their own website. And over 1 billion dollars of cash reserves, again according to Columbia's own financial disclosure forms.
This is going to sound like a crazy conspiracy theory but I think it might be possible that Universities/academics performatively act like they're righteous warriors for justice and helping the "marginalized" while in reality their main interest is protecting the status quo which ensures their elite privilege and wealth. I know, it sounds crazy!
Thomas did not become a woman.
He can’t become a woman.
I've been thinking the same. Normal companies and people USE their savings and investments to get through bad times. That's the whole damn purpose of a cash reserve!!!!
Universities should do the same instead of complaining and begging for contributions.
Endowments are not cash reserves that can be spent. See below
I am a woman - you cannot "become a woman" if you were not born a woman.
You can read the U Penn annual report and grasp that the endowments are locked into chairs and other functions and don’t fund general operations:
https://www.finance.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/Penn-Division-of-Finance-FY22-Annual-Report.pdf
You can buy a named professorship at U Penn for $1M - that’s an endowment. A fraction of that then is used to fund the activities of that chair and cannot be liquidated.
You're conflating specific endowments (donor gifts) for faculty chairs and professorships with a university's entire investment fund, generally known at universities as the endowment. Same word, different thing. (You can see in the report you linked that Penn calls its endowment the "Associated Investment Fund.")
If it worked as you described (a fund of $1M set-asides per endowed professorship), Penn would have more than 22,000 such professorships.
You’re correct I underestimated their endowment cost, they say specifically there are 8400 endowment not 22,000
Well quoting from their financial reports
The University of Pennsylvanias endowment totaled $20.7 billion as of June 30, 2022, an increase of $201 million over the past year. Penn's endowment comprises over 8,400 individual endowment funds benefiting the University's schools, centers, and Health System.
Endowments vary from 3M for some professorships to $750K for scholars it seems to vary by school.
At $3M that comes to 6,900 professorships, while they cite 8400 individual endowments.
That comes to around 2.4M per endowment not $1M
On their website:
Endowed Assistant Professorships attract and retain intermediate-level professors who already have established records of excellence. They position these rising starts for a senior-level appointment and provide invaluable funding for their research, travel, and graduate student assistants.
A gift of $1,500,000 endows an assistant faculty position.
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I can see I’m not going to shake loose your conflation of the mechanism for funding a sponsored professorship (AN endowment) with the Associated Investment Fund (THE endowment). They’re different things.
But even with that matter unresolved, I think you can agree with the larger point, which is that it’s absurd for Penn to cry poverty when it’s sitting on a 22 BILLION dollar bank account (untaxed, on top of it all).
If it worked the way you’re saying, that would be like me saying sure, I may be high-net-worth on paper, but that money is really set aside for my vacations, the beach house, my retirement, and my stock-market investments. Therefore I need - no, deserve - taxpayer handouts so I can afford my day-to-day expenses.
I think it’s more like trust funders. Plenty of money, but access is constrained. I’m certainly not expert in trust law, and my Alma mater is the most heavily endowed per student of any worldwide, yet I get incessant requests. But we must both agree endowing a chair or professorship is not handing them operating cash
The takeaway for me is the shocking extent to which these allegedly "private" institutions are actually dependent on public dollars (your money and mine). It turns out that we pay for not just the subsidized student loans on the way in, not just the taxpayer bailout of student loan balances after the fact, not just grants for specific research projects, but the day-to-day operating costs and employee salaries of these "private" universities.
Universities have abandoned their mission of seeking truth and expanding knowledge in favor of enforcing illiberal ideologies and bizarre anti-truth belief systems (like transgenderism), and they're doing it on our dime. Since we're the ones actually paying for it we should be able to say that we deserve something better for our money. So they can tap the endowments. Or close up shop and we'll find out if we really miss them.
Great article. I've been thinking about this a lot too- like, a lot lefty academic types present themselves in the classroom as these radical iconoclasts- and all you have to do to get them to fold immediately is threaten their tenure. We saw this in Florida, where when DeSantis started cracking down on 'woke' professors, they just subtly changed their syllabi to fall in line and stay under the radar. These are people who lionize Malcolm X, and yet they're unwilling to take on even modest risk for what they supposedly believe in.
But it's even more nauseating at the institutional level. Some scholars have in fact been taking on professional risk to speak out against their universities and support student protestors, but their administrations, who pitch these schools as places to develop intellectual integrity, are falling all over themselves to be the fastest conformers, offering to nuke academic freedoms that have been won over a century. If Columbia agrees to put one of its departments in 'receivership' that will cross an absolutely insane red line. If these colleges are worth anything to the world, this is the time to show it. As Zaid points out, they are sitting on a massive pile of cash- if they're not willing to use that to defend their basic function, then what are these schools even for?
Yep over the years private American schools have built huge endowments.
But that hasn't stopped them from feeding at the public trough or from pleading poverty when the public questions the return on investment.
No man can become a woman. No man who went through male puberty no matter that he takes exogenous estrogen is a woman or should compete with women. Follow the science. This stuff is just fucking annoying.
If universities are an example of institutions on the "cutting-edge of progressive social and cultural issues", we're in real trouble. The economic structure of higher ed is based on exploration of labor--80-90% of the teaching is done by adjuncts/post-docs/graduate students, who are paid a pittance compared to professors and administrators. Universities oversupply Ph.D.'s to continually keep the labor supply in surplus, and is no different than business in this country encouraging immigration in order to keep wages down (H1B and undocumenteds). Universities may be emphasizing social and cultural issues but there is nothing progressive in immiserating the majority of your labor force.
The “568 Cartel” lawsuits, about top U.S. universities engaging in price-fixing over the past several decades, are ongoing and not getting enough press coverage. https://568cartel.com
The challenge is that the decision-makers on a question like that are not going to be lefty academics/students/administrators, but rather the fiscally and culturally conservative Board of Trustees. Board members tend to be the kind of top corporate execs who can cut 5-6 figure checks to their alma maters, and they will be a hard sell for passing up $400 million to make a statement, even if it's the right thing to do.
Now, if I were a student activist, this proposal here IS what I'd be pushing for, just acknowledging the college governance reality.
Zaid you’re a great troll when you want to be
Heaven forbid that such institutions adopt institutional neutrality about political issues and return to focusing on fidelity to its core mission (Kalven Principles). That return to sanity (and public funding) is a step too far, I guess.
Having the Trump administration take over a whole department and purge it of political dissidents is the opposite of institutional neutrality.
But it's somehow okey dokey if a Democratic admin pays for an ideological capture of it?
I'm advocating for a return of universities and colleges administrations to implementing institutional neutrality based on the Kalven Principles (U of Chicago). Your politically inspired comment simply demonstrates the ongoing problem.
Thanks for acknowledging the gray areas of this topic of trans women in sports. Yes, let's talk about it. But no, let's not just adopt a position because funds are being held ransom - especially, as you note, there are principled options.
Unfortunately, most state laws prohibit spending endowment funds below historical balances or cost. Only income or gains can be spent.
Columbia university, to use one example, sits on billions of dollars of cash reserves. Are there laws preventing using reserves to make up for loss of federal funding? https://www.finance.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/Finance%20Documents/Financial%20Reports/Columbia%20University%202024%20Financials_signed.pdf
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/restricted-fund.asp#:~:text=Endowments%20are%20usually%20permanently%20restricted%20funds.
They have an unrestricted endowment of ~8.5 billion dollars as per their own financial disclosures on their own website. And over 1 billion dollars of cash reserves, again according to Columbia's own financial disclosure forms.