How Harvard Rules

Matt gets the same emails I do, apparently:

I'll happily admit that I'm not much of a charitable donor one way or the other. Still, I'm always a bit flabbergasted by the fundraising solicitations I get from Harvard. It seems to me that insofar as I give money away, it should be directed at an institution that actually helps people in need.

And Noah Millman adds:

What saddens me the most about enormous bequests to organizations like Harvard or Yale is the poverty of the imagination of the givers. The elite university strikes me as precisely the kind of institution that is ripe for radical reinvention. People like Meg Whitman made their fortunes founding or leading companies that radically transformed sectors of the economy, and reaped enormous rewards for doing so. Why on earth wouldn’t they want to tackle philanthropic missions with the same seriousness? Why would they want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on fancy residences for students, when they could put not only their name but the stamp of their personalities on an institution in a way that really shapes the future?

The trouble is that philanthropy, done seriously, is awfully hard work no matter what sector you're investing in (that's why Warren Buffet outsourced it!), and elite universities, while ripe for reinvention in many ways, are rich enough to make them one of the hardest places for even the richest donor to exert any serious influence. What they do offer to donors, though, is immediate (if superficial) bang for the buck. Or put another way, what they lack in terms of actually, you know, "helping people in need," they make up for in rock-solid tangibility. If Meg Whitman poured tens of millions of dollars fighting AIDS in Africa (and maybe she has, for all I know), she'd probably end up in the same position the U.S. government is in - struggling to figure out what kind of a difference her money is making. Whereas by giving millions to her alma mater, she knows she can end up with a lovely residential college that will bear her name for as long as Princeton is Princeton. And without disputing anything Noah says - if I were graced with enormous wealth, Harvard wouldn't see a dime of it - I can understand the temptation to see one's own name planted forever on an Ivy League campus, alongside all those ancient Brahmins. (Douthat College has a certain ring to it, don't you think ...?)

Then, of course, there's the more obvious and more hardheaded reason why obscenely rich people give so much money to universities that don't need it - namely, to ensure that their kids get in.

Comments

Douthat College has a certain ring to it, don't you think ...?

Douthat House, don't you mean?

Posted by right | January 25, 2008 3:58 PM

Also for some of us donating to other institutions, there's the fact that some of them have "needs-blind" admissions and then try to provide sufficient financial support so that anyone who really wants to attend and is qualified can do so.

I figure my $$$ help provide opportunities for the brilliant kids who can't afford to go.

Also, since any $$$ I have goes 99% towards actually paying for the programs/kids/whatever, it's a better bang for my buck than paying one of those supposed "charities" where 85% of the cash raised goes to the fundraisers. (BTW--ask for a financial breakdown of costs vs. who actually gets the money whenever you have one of those fundraisers on the phone. They can't get you off the phone fast enough.)

Posted by grumpy realist | January 25, 2008 4:03 PM

This seems analogous to the perennial debate about the space program. Why spend all that money going to the moon when you could plow it all into anti-poverty programs?

The answer is that developing technology and going to the moon turns out to be something that government (and thus far only government) can do quite well, while abating poverty is something of which it doesn't seem capable. And, of course, it turns out that the space program threw off all sorts of useful technologies for people in need--from warmer fabrics to better methods of food preservation to energy-saving insulation. Investing in universities can benefit the needy by indirection, and it's a surer bet that your money will be put to an efficient use.

Posted by southpaw | January 25, 2008 4:14 PM

An interesting intermediate example is Henry Rowan (and his wife), who donated $100 million to Glassboro State College to enable an engineering program to be created. (The only one in South Jersey.) I understand he said at the time that it seemed a much better use than just funding a building at his alma malter, M.I.T.

(Subsequently they named the entire place after him, hence Rowan University, but it was not a condition of the gift.)

Posted by John DE | January 25, 2008 6:54 PM

"Also for some of us donating to other institutions, there's the fact that some of them have "needs-blind" admissions and then try to provide sufficient financial support so that anyone who really wants to attend and is qualified can do so. "

If that's your reason, you might want to revisit the whole issue. Most elite schools are more likely to give "merit aid" to wealthy applicants than help low income or even middle class ones. This is pretty well documented, so much so that I'm surprised you'd use it as a reason for charitable giving.

Posted by Cal | January 25, 2008 7:06 PM

Nope--not in the case of my own alma mater. I checked the statistics.

Posted by grumpy realist | January 25, 2008 7:31 PM

Another question: would Princeton have agreed to such a quid-pro-quo if the donor's name weren't a nice, dry, WASPy name like Whitman? (fake etymology: White-man?) *Could* you even buy a Douthat College or Douthat House with 100m? My guess would be that the price goes up with each post-Mayflower generation. Not that I mind, terribly, but I do wonder.

Posted by Max | January 25, 2008 9:00 PM

I don't really believe that Max. Colleges are always accepting huge gifts from rich people of all stripes. Look at the saudi prince who georgetown named a school after.

Posted by Gordo | January 27, 2008 12:40 PM