Smith College announced that they have just wrapped up a fundraising drive. $486 million dollars!!!
Inside Higher Ed reports that Wellesley is in the midst of one with a goal of $500 million.
I am so conflicted. On one hand I am really pleased that women’s colleges can pull in the large donations and provide such amazing facilities and faculty. The financial aid is generous.
On the other hand, their fundraising goals expect more money in the short term than many colleges have in their total endowment.
They are just two of the liberal arts colleges that have massive amounts of money. I can understand alumni being proud of their college and wanting to donate but when do we say “You have enough?”
Lately when my kids’ colleges or my alma mater call and ask for donations, I send money to a small rural college that is almost 50% first generation students. Needless to say it has a much smaller endowment. These kids are not academic rockstars who could get great scholarships elsewhere. I feel like they benefit more from my support than if I gave to a rich college. I have no connection to this college and it is in another state. I bet they are trying to figure out who I am and why I give a weird times of the year.
What do you think? The utopian in me wishes that the rich colleges could adopt small rural ones and spread the love around.
Many have argued that ‘regular’ alums should not donate to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford because the donations are just a drop in the bucket, that even $20k doesn’t make a difference because the endowments are so huge. The schools have goal not only to raise money, but to have the highest % of donors, and beg parents and alums to even give $25 just so that they can put a check mark in the ‘donor’ column.
My question isn’t so much “How much money do you already have?” but “What are you going to do with it?” Will they build a new gym and a fancier dorm? Or will they give some of their adjuncts a stable, full time job with benefits?
If we hit it rich, I would give to Wellesley (or Smith) in a heartbeat. There is no way my D could go there without the generous aid they have given her.
The reality is that every student at such a school gets aid, because the per-student cost, per year, to the college is something like $96K. Full price pay $66K. That’s 30K the endowment is funding (at least), per student. There are certainly some super rich, very advantged people there, but almost 60% of the students receive aid. The average aid award is 42K. The idea is to pay it forward, so the endowment can be there to support our daughters and granddaughters in their day, not to run it down to nothing. Many of the alums who donate are paying it forward.
Wellesley has been very smart with their money (and I suspect Smith has been smart too). They have a gym, not a fancy one. It looks 80s to me but there’s nothing wrong with it so it stays. They have a science building–it looks like it came from the 70s. But there’s nothing wrong with it, so it stays. Common area dorm furniture has been there since…probably well before Hillary’s time. (The Persian carpets are magnificent, but OLD–torn, musty, but they stay.) They have a smart plan for growth (not all schools do). They value their history. They value their students and their staff.
I think this past year, with everything women stand to lose via politics, has woken a lot of doners up who might not have answered the phone a couple of years ago. They want to contribute and support other women.
I will donate when I can.
As far as giving to other colleges-- my preference is to give to our local scholarship fund.
I just got invited to the launch of Bryn Mawr’s capital campaign in Chicago in April. BMC is about half the size of Smith and Wellesley, but has similar ambitions and goals. It’s underfunded relative to its peers.
If I give, it will be to cover the cost of the launch party, which includes complimentary dinner at one of the best restaurants in the city. I focus my charitable giving elsewhere, but I’m not trying to be a freeloader.
I graduated from Yale in 1982 and have been donating small sums since then. Yale is need blind and the average aid for students is $42,000 per year and loans are not a part of any student’s package. Over 50% of students are on financial aid. I know these stats because I recruit for Yale in low income areas. My D goes there now and even with our salary, she has a very generous financial aid package (trust me we would not have gotten a dime most places). So, though I may not be able to match the millions that other alums have donated, I feel proud of the money I have donated over the years and feel I am definitely now getting my “money’s worth”.
Amherst has a huge endowment, but in the past two decades it has used that huge endowment to provide tremendous amounts of need-based financial aid, and has transformed itself from a haven for rich prep school kids into the most economically diverse top LAC in the nation. Vassar has done the same thing.
I’ve always found the endowment issue interesting. Having a large endowment doesn’t always equate to being generous with financial aid. Take Barnard College. It’s endowment is far smaller than Smith, Mount Holyoke or Wellesley but it still has need blind admissions and meets full need unlike its other, wealthier, sisters (and I know from experience that this is true…they offer excellent financial aid). The Provost at Barnard also explained last year that unlike Smith and some other colleges, the don’t “budget” for financial aid but rather appropriate whatever is necessary to meet demand. That’s why in some years they’ve had to curtain spending in other areas.
Barnard, too, has had a very successful capital campaign but from the beginning they said that one of its major objectives was to preserve their financial aid policy. I applaud them for that. And their financial aid policy is supposedly one reason that their acceptance rate has fallen so very low.
Soka’s a unique case. Its endowment was funded not by alumni, but was a lump sum from the fabulously wealthy Soka Gakkai religious cult in Japan, which controls the school. The leader of Soka Gakkai is Daisaku Ikeda, and the closest person I can compare him to is a more sophisticated version of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church in Korea.
Soka University is part of the Ikeda’s longstanding efforts to legitimize and mainstream Soka Gakkai.
From what I understand, that “transformation” (which was great!) took place largely under Anthony Marx, who left Amherst in 2011. Are his policies still in place? I’ve heard different things.
What distinguishes Yale is that it meets full need for all,accepted students…that is the financial,aid end of it.
Being need blind just means that ability to pay is not considered when the application for admission is reviewed for a student.
The vast majority of colleges in this country are need blind for admissions…but moat do NOT have the very generous need based aid awards for all students who need such aid.
I donte to my undergrad school every year…a restricted donation to my department. That school gave me the sound basis for my entire working career. My donations have not been huge…ever…but I do give annually and have done so since the year I graduated.
Actually it is. Public universities don’t have the manpower or the time to have admissions review all of those financial need reviews. They admit the students…and then financial aid crafts an award.
Most schools do NOT meet full need for all students. Many give just federally funded loans…and grants. No need for admissions to know that.
Community colleges have open enrollment as do some directional schools. Students get admitted who apply…with no regard for their financial need.
There are schools that practice enrollment management, or are need aware for admissions. But of the over 3000 colleges in this country…they are the minority.
