Harvard University’s endowment is $35 billion, and some people aren’t happy about it. Massachusetts legislators see money that could be theirs, and are contemplating new taxes. Social activists see money that could be going to charity, and want to divert it. Distinguished alumni who have landed at public universities wonder why, with all that cash, Harvard graduates such a tiny number of students.
These are all legitimate concerns, and I won’t be suggesting the ideal policy compromise. But there is one misimpression that people seem to have, that might as well be corrected before any hasty actions are taken: the purpose of Harvard is not to educate students. If anything, its primary purpose is to produce research and scholarly work. Nobody should be surprised that the gigantic endowment isn’t put to use in providing top-flight educational experiences for a much larger pool of students; it could be, for sure, but that’s not the goal. The endowment is there to help build new facilities, launch new research initiatives, and attract the best faculty. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s hard to get alumni donations when you don’t have any alumni, serious consideration would doubtless be given to cutting out students entirely. Sure, some would complain that they enjoy teaching, that it keeps them fresh, or that students can be useful as research assistants. But those are reasons why the students are useful to the faculty; they are not assertions that the purpose of the institution is to educate students for their own sakes.
Don’t believe me? Here is the test: when was the last time Harvard made a senior tenure offer to someone because they were a world-class educator, rather than a world-class researcher? Not only is the answer “never,” the question itself is somewhat laughable.
This is not a value judgment, nor is it a particular complaint about Harvard. It’s true of any top-ranked private research university, including Caltech. (Note that Caltech has over 1200 faculty members and fewer than 900 undergraduate students.) And it is not a statement about universities in general; many large public universities, and smaller liberal-arts schools, take education very seriously as a primary mission. This is by no means incompatible with being a top-notch research institution — the physics departments at places like Berkeley or UC Santa Barbara would be the envy of almost any private research university. But those places also take their educational mission very seriously, which Harvard, honestly, does not.
Of course, certain individual faculty members at Harvard might be great teachers and care deeply about their students; but that’s a bonus, not a feature of the institution. (Harvey Mansfield, to a visiting colleague: “You should close your door. If you don’t, undergraduates may wander in.”)
None of this is necessarily good or bad; it’s just a recognition of the state of affairs. Harvard et al. judge themselves by the research and scholarship they produce. Students will always keep applying to those places and trying to get in, because the aura of intellectual attainment produced by precisely those scholarly accomplishments will always act as a powerful draw. Such students are by no means making a mistake; the intellectual atmosphere at such places truly is intoxicating, and if nothing else the interaction with your fellow talented students can be a life-changing experience. But to try your best to get into Harvard and then complain once you are there that the professors seem interested in their own work rather than in teaching is to utterly miss the point. And to complain that Harvard has a giant endowment that it chooses to use for purposes other than educating more students is equally misguided.
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I think the best solution was to stop giving tax write-offs to donors to universities with endowments above a certain size. (Sorry, can’t find the link to the person who suggested it). The social utility of a donation decreases after a certain point.
You people think too much.
“Still don’t think I quite follow the logic here. The reason why investment funds are taxed is because their profits are ultimately realized for the direct financial benefit of individuals.”
Well… not exactly. The reason we have taxes isn’t to punish individuals by stealing their hard-earned cash — it’s to raise money for the government. Hypothetically at least, we try to do this in “fair” ways which inflict the least amount of damage to the economy. The fact that Harvard’s profits don’t go towards individual incomes is a reason *to* tax it, not to leave it untaxed, because reducing individual incomes is a bad thing that we want to avoid if we can. On the other hand, Harvard’s profits (supposedly) go to other good things that we don’t want to hurt. The government has essentially decided that we’re willing to leave nonprofit institutions untaxed (and therefore to tax you and me and everybody else more) because they engage in goals that the government considers worth subsidizing. But there’s nothing unreasonable about saying, Hey — we’re giving up a lot of revenue, and we’re not getting a whole lot back for it.
It is sad that the size of the endowement brings so much attention, rather than attention focusing on what the endowement is supposd to be doing, which is, once again, according to the 1650 charter: “educate english and indian youth’. The Harvard Indian College died of market forces.
For 30 years, I taught in a well know liberal arts college that really did value teaching, and promotions and salaries were strongly related to teaching abilities. One year I taught a night section of a course at a local major research university, and tried to get in contact with the Univ Prof who was currently teaching most of the other sections. He didn’t want to talk, but agreed to send me a copy of his “Class Rules” that he distributes to all of his students. Working in an environment where students were always welcome in my office, I was amazed, and probably a bit naive, when I saw his statement, “Each year there are a few students who feel it is necessary to talk with me. For those students, I have reserved 4:15 to 4:30 on Thursday afternoons. Your need to meet with me should be of such importance that you will be willing to cancel any other meetings/activities.” From then on, whenever one of my liberal arts college students complained to me that, “Where were you? You weren’t in your office”, I showed my student the Univ Prof rules about talking with him.
Well, I would like to thank the other commentators for bringing up the issue of the endowment. I knew it had grown to be huge, but I wasn’t really questioning this.
Basically, I agree entirely with Sean’s thoughts. I am now a tenure track professor at a second tier research university.
Like any other job, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what is valued. Here I offer an easy way to figure out this stuff.
Offer letters are not talked about openly, generally, but all that you have to do is look at one to get a sense of what is valued. My offer letter is about 2.5 pages. There is a small part of one paragraph dedicated to teaching. The great majority of the rest talks about “external funding” as a requirement (read: research grants), publications, and my startup money package.
I’m new at my university (less than 6 months). During this time, the total time that I have spent talking/meeting/emailing about teaching with any other professor/dean/etc is about 1 hour (and, yes, I am expected to teach in the fall – it just isn’t important enough to actually discuss). In contrast, I have had many, many conversations and meetings about funding – conservatively, I’d say 100 hours on this. That *does not include* the two grants that I have already submitted and the one to three (depending on my choices) that I am about to start work on. (And I’m not even counting “minor” things like training grant applications for people in my lab; did those, too – and got the salary money for my people!).
Need I say more? Again, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what is valued…
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