The Governor of New York State, Elliot Spitzer has proposed the creation of a $4 billion endowment to support public higher education. He would raise that endowment by selling or leasing some of the state’s lottery revenues to the private sector. As noted, some in state government have expressed discomfort with the use of gambling [...]
Filed under: Ivy League, endowment | Leave a Comment »
The University of Pennsylvania has announced a $15 million gift from one of its board members, Christopher Browne. The gift will establish five named chairs in the school of arts and sciences. Mr. Browne is the managing director of the investment house, Tweedy, Brown Company, and since the Insider actually has invested with that firm [...]
Filed under: Pennsylvania, endowment, faculty, fundraising | Leave a Comment »
Although Oxford and Cambridge are among the very oldest of the world’s universities, they are still relatively new to the business of fundraising. Such efforts weren’t necessary in the past because of strong government support that kept the price of attendance down, but the last two decades have seen significant erosion of taxpayer funding.
Rising to [...]
Filed under: Oxbridge, endowment, fundraising | Leave a Comment »
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring the Department of Education to publish a list of America’s most expensive colleges. In addition, the same bill increases the maximum size of the popular Pell grant from $5800 to $9000 per year. Another interesting provision limits Federal grants to states that significantly cut back [...]
Filed under: endowment, financial aid, politics, tuition | Leave a Comment »
While it’s a good thing that those few elite colleges and universities with the highest endowment per student have liberalized the grants portion of financial aid packages for students from upper-middle class families, we’re really no closer to solving the college affordability crisis than we were before. As we mentioned yesterday, the colleges and universities [...]
Filed under: endowment, financial aid | Leave a Comment »
It seems that the concept of a higher education endowment gap has realoy taken root in the popular press. How should the Top Tier colleges and universities responsibly exercise control over the huge endowments that ensure their separation from the rest of the higher education universe? To what extent do they owe a debt to [...]
Filed under: Harvard, endowment, facilities, fundraising | Leave a Comment »
This web site has been actively exploring the consequences of the recent spate of announcements made by prestigious Top Tier schools to expand the range of families eligible for financial aid. Certainly those institutions have been feeling pressure from Washington to do something NOW to benefit their students using the huge endowments that they have [...]
Filed under: endowment, financial aid, tuition | Leave a Comment »
The ongoing national debate concerning the creation of huge university endowments and their effect on higher education needs to take account similar issues at elite private schools. As illustrated in the accompanying graphic from the New York Times, several private school endowments now exceed $1 billion, and a significant number exceed $100 million. That’s not [...]
Filed under: endowment, prep schools | Leave a Comment »
Most everyone who has any money invested in the stock market knows the name of the world’s most successful investor, Warren Buffett, but how many people know the name David Swensen? If you’re like me, you didn’t know that he’s the director of Yale University’s investment office, and over the last 20 years, Yale’s investments [...]
Filed under: Yale, endowment | Leave a Comment »
This shoe was going to drop, so it’s good that the time has come. Bloomberg reports that Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) have sent letters to 134 schools asking for data on tuition prices, financial aid and educational costs. This comprehensive article provides an excellent summary of the issues as outlined in [...]
Filed under: endowment, financial aid, politics | Leave a Comment »
Headline News
