Colleges and universities raise $30.30 billion in 2011

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>Divine Comedy:</p>

<p>Other schools are investing comparable amounts in their science/med plants. UChicago may be the leader in one specific area - cancer, but other schools may very well blaze ahead in other medical/scientific specialties. Of note:</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins recently raised $2.2 Billion for its medical facilities, and built a $1 billion dollar clinical facility specifically.</p>

<p>Penn Medicine recently received a $300M gift, and the current “Making History” Campaign at Penn will probably see another $1B invested in the medical/science facilities on campus.</p>

<p>Yale is investing more than $1B for science and medical research. See: [Yale</a> research center also a huge storage closet- The New Haven Register - Serving New Haven, Connecticut](<a href=“http://www.newhavenregister.com/articles/2009/11/08/news/new_haven/a1yale.txt?viewmode=fullstory]Yale”>http://www.newhavenregister.com/articles/2009/11/08/news/new_haven/a1yale.txt?viewmode=fullstory)</p>

<p>I could go down the list and talk about what Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, etc. are doing, but that doesn’t seem worth the time.</p>

<p>Do you have evidence that demonstrates that, overall, UChicago’s committment to and investment in the sciences dwarfs the sums raised/spent at Harvard, Yale, Hopkins, Penn, etc.?</p>

<p>Further, your specific post doesn’t speak to the more general point of why, when contributions by corps, non-alumni, etc. are so important, UChicago is raising hundreds of millions LESS than its peer schools.</p>

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<p>I don’t think it’s worth my time to argue, since the grass will always be greener on the other side of the fence for you. </p>

<p>Where was the praise when the University renovated Searle? Where was the laudation when UChicago built KCBD? How about GCIS? How about the new William Eckhardt Center for Engineering? I have visited quite a few universities, and I have never seen a university that is expanding at the same rate as UChicago. I also have never seen another institution that has completed this many major construction projects in such a short amount of time.</p>

<p>How come I didn’t see any large-scale renovations and construction projects going on at Penn when I visited a year ago?</p>

<p>You cannot compare these schools. They are very different. Does UChicago have a vet school? Does the University have an engineering school as of now? Does the University focus on basic, theoretical research or applied research? Most importantly, what are the sizes of UChicago’s various science departments in comparison to other schools’? Also, how many research centers/bodies/organizations there actually are in a given university?</p>

<p>It should be very clear that total research spending by itself does not tell us anything about the strength of an institution in science.</p>

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<p>Divine Comedy:</p>

<p>You speak to the overall question I have about my alma mater: how much overall change is actually occurring on the ground at UChicago vis a vis its peers?</p>

<p>You, along with other posters such as Truth123 and Phuriku, seem quite optimistic about the fact that UChicago is expanding and improving at a rate unmatched by its peers.</p>

<p>I am more skeptical about this. I think in certain factors where improvement can occur quickly for a school of UChicago’s stature, such as admissions statistics, yield rate, etc., the U of C has made considerable strides.</p>

<p>I am hesitant, however, to assign similar praise to other areas where the University has traditionally lagged behind its peers - such as with fundraising, recent scientific research initiatives, and the like. </p>

<p>For example, you state: “I have never seen a university that is expanding at the same rate as UChicago. I also have never seen another institution that has completed this many major construction projects in such a short amount of time.”</p>

<p>I have also been lucky enough to visit quite a few universities, and I think that it’s difficult to reach such a conclusion. Yale, Penn (check out Penn Park, for example, which just opened), Stanford, etc., are also always moving forward at rapid rates.</p>

<p>That’s the beauty about the top schools in this country - they all plan/develop/move forward very quickly. </p>

<p>UChicago is generally in the pack, but I am curious to note why people are conflating rising rank in US News to broad institutional momentum overall. In the duck pond of elite higher education, it seems as if all the ducks paddle very hard, and, for the past decade or so at least, all of the schools stay in about the same position quantitatively (outside of what the more subjective US News rankings would say).</p>

<p>Is there something that Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Hopkins etc. are not doing that UChicago is which captures why UChicago is a “rising star” across all metrics, and these other schools are more static? Many posters seem to point to this. I certainly think the College has improved and is stronger now than it ever was, but, from a broader institutional perspective, I don’t know if UChicago is “catching up” at nearly the rate that some posters attest. </p>

<p>Is UChicago catching up in terms of admissions stats and easily quantifiable strengths in its college? Sure.</p>

<p>As an institution overall, is UChicago covering ground and catching up rapidly to its peers on other fronts? I don’t know at all how we can possibly know this. Completing “major construction projects in such a short amount of time” doesn’t seem to say much. That may just very well point to the fact that UChicago’s physical plant was crumbling for far too long, and the school needs to make improvements quickly to match the plants that some of its peers had 10 years ago. </p>

<p>To conclude, I really enjoyed my time at UChicago, but I also don’t want to get carried away with how the school is doing vis a vis its peers. I just don’t know that we have enough data to support some of the projections made on this board, outside of the admissions-related speculation.</p>

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<p>I just want to clarify something. I knew Penn was building Penn Park, but I did not consider that a major construction project.</p>

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<p>[Buildings</a> & Renovations: A Green Urban Campus | Penn : Making History](<a href=“http://makinghistory.upenn.edu/priorities/buildings]Buildings”>http://makinghistory.upenn.edu/priorities/buildings)</p>

<p>That’s a list of some of the ~$1B Penn is investing in improving its physical plant. Their law school just finished construction of a new building, and I’m sure there will be more projects to follow. </p>

<p>Again, I guess I’m more of the opinion that, overall, there are a large number of great, fast-moving and forward thinking schools out there. I’m not sure if the “momentum” at UChicago surpasses what’s in place at Stanford, Yale, Penn, Hopkins, etc etc…</p>

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<p>Cue7:</p>

<p>You’re right about donation amounts correlating with scientific and medical research. But I still don’t quite understand why total fundraising dollars is so important to you. Princeton’s amount is even lower than Chicago’s, and would you really argue that Princeton’s financial situation is troubling? And what about Caltech, especially since you seem to think that the total number of alumni is irrelevant to this issue? At least from my perspective, it seems that these cases would contradict your concern, as both universities are doing fine from a financial and research perspective.</p>

<p>Now, there’s a reason why MIT and Hopkins can pull in this kind of money, and the answer is, simply: because they need it. Science isn’t cheap. With science (esp. engineering and medicine), you don’t have to just pay for human resources; you have to pay for lab equipment and devices that tend to be quite expensive. Chicago does substantially less lab science research and substantially more theoretical research than MIT and Hopkins, which I assume costs significantly less money. So likely, Chicago is pulling in as much as it needs.</p>

<p>Also, it’s almost certainly the case that Chicago tries to obtain in donations the amount that it thinks necessary to operate the University. While MIT and Hopkins likely NEED donations due to the nature of their work, Chicago doesn’t necessarily NEED the cahs and therefore likely doesn’t campaign as aggressively. I’m sure if Princeton really wanted to, it could collect as much as Columbia. But if its current operating expenses are fine already, then what’s the point? Same with Chicago. If the lab expenses for half of Chicago’s scientists basically amount to the cost of chalk, pencils, and paper, and we’re already paying our professors 3rd best in the nation, is there really a point to aggressive campaigns?</p>

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<p>Phuriku:</p>

<p>Thanks for the post. You and Divine Comedy are certainly right that total fundraising dollars shouldn’t matter when you consider the size and scope of a particular school. So, for example, Caltech has a very narrow scope and is a pretty small school (about 2100 students and 300 professors). Similarly, Princeton has no professional graduate programs and has a small graduate research community (about 7500 students and 1100 professors total).</p>

<p>Neither Princeton nor Caltech (or MIT, for that matter) purport to be major, comprehensive research institutions. The scope of these schools is more limited, and, while they excel in certain areas of research, they are not expansive research universities by any means, and being major, comprehensive research institutions is not part of any of these schools’ missions.</p>

<p>In this light, the fundraising capabilities of these schools are quite impressive, given their size, scope, and mission. Caltech generates $150M a year, Princeton about $240M, and MIT about $530M.</p>

<p>In contrast to these schools, UChicago openly purports to be a major, comprehensive research school. Unlike these other schools, UChicago has a significant medical center, a wide array of professional graduate programs, and a significantly larger physical footprint (with about 15k student and 2k professors). </p>

<p>In this vein, UChicago more closely resembles other major, comprehensive research institutions such as Stanford, Duke, and Yale, than it does Cal Tech, MIT, and Princeton. Moreover, if you look at the size of the schools and the expansiveness and ambition of their research programs, UChicago again resembles schools such as Stanford, Duke, and Yale more than Caltech or MIT.</p>

<p>It’s through this lens that UChicago’s more paltry fundraising proves to be worrisome. Yale, Stanford, Duke etc. are roughly similar in size (with Yale being a bit smaller and Stanford being a touch larger, perhaps), and they have very similar institutional missions - to advance research across many fields at the highest level. Nevertheless, these other schools - schools that mirror UChicago more closely than MIT or CalTech, generate a great deal more fundraising dollars each year. </p>

<p>As fundraising is the lifeblood of major research endeavors, and as Duke, Stanford, etc. have similar missions and are of very similar size to UChicago, this disparity, to me, is worrying. I identify this as a problem area for UChicago, given its size, scope, goals, and academic mission. </p>

<p>(In fact, it’s curious to me that the major midwestern research universities trail their peers on the coasts so significantly. UChicago, Northwestern, and WashU all have a roughly similar size, scope, and mission to Yale, Stanford, etc., but the big 3 midwestern schools lag in total fundraising. This is a conversation for another time. Of course, as a UChicago alum, I’m more concerned with UChicago than NU and Wash U.)</p>

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<p>I’m reposting this - about a year later. I still haven’t heard any valid reasons why, in comparison to very similarly situated schools (both in terms of mission and size) UChicago lags behind its peers (e.g. Stanford, Yale, Duke, etc.) for fundraising. </p>

<p>I didn’t buy the “UChicago has a smaller alumni base and fewer wealthy alums” because corporate giving is now so substantial.</p>

<p>I didn’t buy the “it’s like comparing apples and oranges” argument, because UChicago is quite similar to these other schools both in terms of size and mission (outside of not having an engineering school - which is still just one component of a school, and doesn’t explain the hundreds of millions of dollars gap between UChicago and these other schools).</p>

<p>I didn’t buy the “well things are looking up” argument, because it’s increasingly hard to win fundraising dollars in this economy.</p>

<p>Sadly, from my perspective, as a research “powerhouse,” UChicago seems to be a bit backwater and, increasingly, becoming a bit niche (more resembling Princeton than Stanford, say), which is NOT it’s educational mission. I wonder if, in the next 5-7 years, as Harvard and Stanford (especially Stanford) continue to grow across all fields, UChicago will begin to resemble more of a niche research school. </p>

<p>Curious if there are any other thoughts on this.</p>

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<p>alicejohnson:</p>

<p>That’s fine, except being a niche school was never in UChicago’s educational mission - it’s goal was to produce great research, and it didn’t limit itself to particular fields (as opposed to, say, MIT and CalTech). MIT’s mission, for example, specifically points to education in science and technology:</p>

<p>[MIT</a> ? About](<a href=“About MIT | MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology”>About MIT | MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology)</p>

<p>UChicago’s mission is much broader.</p>