Beware of Billionaires Bearing Gifts (Colleges relying increasingly on rich donors)

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Beware of Billionaires
Bearing Gifts
Colleges and universities are increasingly relying on rich people. The damage — to the nation — is just beginning.
February 4, 2008

By Sam Pizzigati


How would a smart nation go about getting the most bang for the higher education buck?

Would a smart nation smother a handful of colleges and universities with more money than they could ever possibly put to sound educational use? Or would a sane nation spread resources for higher ed around, to give every student a shot at a quality education?

Any reasonable nation, of course, would choose the latter course.

The United States has chosen the former.

Not consciously, to be sure. Americans have never gone to the polls and cast their ballots for a enrich-the-few approach to higher education. But the United States has taken that route anyway.

And the result has now become too embarrassing to ignore. The enormous wealth now pouring into elite U.S. private colleges and universities — at a time when average families are struggling to afford rising tuitions at budget-cutting public colleges — is finally beginning to become a political issue.

The Senate Finance Committee late last month asked the nation's wealthiest colleges and universities to turn over financial data on everything from what they give out in student aid to how much bonus cash their investment advisers collect.

How wealthy have higher ed's wealthiest become? The industry's scorekeeper — the National Association of College and University Business Officers — now counts 76 institutions with endowments worth at least $1 billion.

But the bulk of this endowment wealth sits with a few handfuls of elite schools — the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, the wealthy liberal arts colleges — that together educate less than 100,000 of America's 20 million postsecondary students. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.cipa-apex.org/toomuch/articlenew2008/feb4a.html

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. This is privatization.

And guess who benefits?

[Igel]

3. They've always been private.

Who benefits?

Obviously only the wealthy, the elite, the privileged, the "vampire elite" and scum of the earth, people thatwouldn't dare to show their faces in the Democratic Party, people that only fascists and racists could support.


Can that be right? Sure. Rich. Private. Elite. ... = Scum. After all, Bush went to Yale. What more needs to be said. Case proven, case closed.


Umm ... maybe we need more data.

Bill and Hillary Clinton and Kerry went Yale?

Well, ... ok. Maybe my first formulation was just a little off. But only a little, right?

Wait, didn't Obama go to Harvard?

I think a fair number of Obama and Clinton supporters might think the country will benefit.

[northzax]

2. and the flow back has, at some level, started

as of now, no one will be denyed an education at Harvard or Yale due to finances, the sliding scale makes it cheaper than a state school for most people. it should be, and eventually will be, free for all but the ultra-rich.