<p>Muerte - I still don’t know if I agree with your analysis on the endowment issue. My traditional view is that, the smaller school with the larger endowment will generally be better off than the larger school with a similarly sized (but slightly smaller) endowment. Say within a couple years, Penn has a $8 Billion endowment, and MIT has a $8.5 billion endowment. Both schools siphon a bit of the endowment to help balance the budget, and quite simply, Penn’s endowment and whatever percentage it chooses to use toward the budget will be spread more thinly than MIT’s. Penn has a much larger array of schools (education school, communications school, nursing etc.), and MIT has a much more focused mission.</p>
<p>Going on with this issue, I think trying to use MIT as the comparison point is a bit problematic too. In terms of institutional structure and mission, Penn is most similar to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. It’s better to compare the endowments and wealth of those schools, since their missions and structure are much more similar to Penn’s. MIT is so focused as a tech/science school, that it doesn’t make for the best comparison - and it’s also just considerably smaller than Yale, Stanford, etc. </p>
<p>Accordingly, in direct comparison to Stanford or Yale or Harvard, Penn just has a long, long way to go. Stanford is the “poorest” of these schools, yet it still has about a $13 Billion endowment. Yale has a $16 B endowment. Also, despite your argument that size of student population doesn’t matter, it’s worth noting that Y and S are considerably smaller than Penn at around 14K students each. </p>
<p>Finally, yes, Penn has a great alumni network, but I just don’t know if it can rival Harvard’s or Princeton’s within the next 20 years or so. </p>
<p>Maybe I am too rigid in my views of higher education, but the fact of the matter is, in the past 150 years, the only school that has truly risen to challenge HYP has been Stanford, and Stanford benefits from being in a drastically different area. MIT or Cal Tech are niche schools. There are no other schools that have really challenged this class of schools, so I don’t really know why any school would rival HYPS in the next 20 years. Keep in mind, along with Penn, Columbia, Chicago, and Duke are also looking to improve significantly in the decade ahead, and I don’t think any of these schools will get to HYPS level any time soon. </p>
<p>I’m not saying it’s a done deal, I’m just saying what you’re arguing is highly, highly unlikely.</p>