“Harvard announced on Wednesday that the billionaire hedge fund manager John A. Paulson has given a $400 million endowment to support the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences — the largest gift in the university’s history.” …
Wow.
Many thanks to Mr. Paulson! What a generous donation that will produce groundbreaking research and innovation that benefits not only Harvard but the world as well.
Guess who has a kid about ready to enter college?
John Paulson benefited hugely from his undergrad at NYU, which propelled him to an acceptance at HBS. But when it came time for his kid to enter college, he promptly forgot about the school that accepted him when Harvard didn’t want him, and gives it all to Harvard because…Harvard needs it more. Right.
Meanwhile, this is practically an embarrassment of riches for Harvard. How much endowment can one school hoard before appearing greedy? HYP are way pass that point. Time for these bastions of liberalism, champions of equality to stop paying lip service to equality and share some of that wealth. Since they claim each year that they could accept 2 to 3 full classes who are equally qualified, why not offer all their wait-listed applicants a free ride at another institution of their choice where they were accepted? This will also assuage all the unhooked middle class white and Asian kids who are being unfairly sacrificed for less qualified URMs, athletes and legacies, and gain these schools a lot of good will.
But nooooo…, they prefer to hoard it all like Bernie Madoff and the rest of the 1%.
Perhaps he concluded that Harvard would spend it better.
NYU manages to appear greedy on a much smaller endowment than Harvard’s.
Students who attend Harvard already pay quite a bit less than they would if it wasn’t for gifts like Paulson’s.
I hear NYU is one of the stingiest with financial aid. Others can chime in on that if I heard wrong.
Harvard is like an 800 lb. gorilla - it can do as it pleases. I suspect they’d better accept Paulson Jr. though! Quid pro quo - we all know it goes on.
NYU is stingy because its endowment is like, a billion? NYU must be hopping mad now.
NYU’s president and faculty are basically at war with one another. What kind of investor would pour money into that hot mess?
Isn’t NYU’s president extremely, extremely highly paid? Why give to that?
Harvard needs these kinds of assets. The wealth generated by a first-rate university for the US as a whole is tremendous, and a university cannot give first-rate educations, develop first-rate intellectual property and create tomorrow’s leaders without ample financial resources.
So thank you, Mr. Paulson!
Harvard trying to catch up to Stanford. Haha. Times change i guess.
But see this Jeffrey Sachs article about that donation:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/the-harvard-ikb-school-of_b_7518082.html
That article borders on libel. Paulson is worth billions. Even if the $400M were allegedly from a bad source, there’s no evidence that the $400M was from that bad source alone.
It’s his money, he can use it as he wishes.
@HappyAlumnus, who do you think is libeled?
Yes it’s his money to use as he wishes. However, donating to the richest school in the world is hardly a worthy cause. Harvard could build a billion dollar engineering school without putting a dent in their endowment.
What would be really impressive is if some tycoon said, “Here’s a donation to cover tuition for any enrolled undergraduate student - if you are smart enough to get in, regardless of income, it will be paid.”
@notjoe, the statement below borders on libel against John Paulson.
“John Paulson approached Goldman Sachs with the idea of ripping off unknowing investors to the tune of $1 billion.”
Washington Post article about Malcolm Gladwell’s tweets concerning this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/05/malcolm-gladwell-if-billionaires-dont-step-up-harvard-will-soon-be-down-to-its-last-30-billion/
This is essentially what Ken Griffin of Citadel did last year: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/02/kenneth-griffin-makes-largest-gift-in-harvard-college-history/
Haha. Love the Huffington Post article, and those Malcolm Gladwell tweet’s are awesome!! :))
Here are my favorites:
Next up, Bernie Madoff will be donating $450M to Harvard, and the business school will be renamed Ponzi Business School.