<p>You don't have to give (in).</p>
<p>On the one hand I get tired of being hit up for donations while I'm actively paying for two students at once. OTOH, what if I was a rich philanthropic guy who was willing to donate despite this? There are people who'll donate on top of paying tuition so I suppose the colleges may as well try to solicit what they can. I can always politely refuse them on phone calls and throw away the mail solicitations.</p>
<p>^ That is exactly true. Believe me, they wouldn't be calling if they weren't making money. So if you can afford to give, and you want to - fine. If not, politely refuse. Same is true of any not-for-profit who feels like they are bugging you. They only do it because they have to.</p>
<p>udsd<em>ucla</em>dad: My husband and I occasionally wonder how it is that our peer group seems to have so much more stuff than us. Then we stop and figure out where our money goes -and it is our kids' educations (plus music stuff). Like you, we don't regret our choices a bit. There is a limit of course, and our kids know it. Still, I try really hard to not judge my friends who think nothing of sending their kids off to crappy schools (and we have several around here...) and then racing out and buying a fancy car and and renovating their kitchen or whatever. But, I know it is absolutely not my business. At all. Everybody makes different choices. And the jury's still out about our choices!!! LOL</p>
<p>My three alma maters all paid me well to attend, but after all this time, you would think they'd decide they are unlikely to get lucky. ;)</p>
<p>"Should we feel the same about other well marketed indulgences? gambling? credit cards? McDonald's supersize ? super caffeinated and worse energy drinks? alchohol? pharmaceuticals? meth? I'm just musing here and I'm not waving a red flag but isn't it appropriate to challenge or criticize the marketeers on what they are selling to our society? Just asking."</p>
<p>None of these other marketers of luxury goods enjoy a waiver from anti-trust laws and the tax shelter of non-profit status. The question in my mind is why should we the tax payers be granting a tax deduction to some billionaire giving millions of dollars to Harvard University which aleady has a $30 billion endowment it cannot even usefully spend the proceeds of. Why should you or I be called upon to subsidize EMM1's conspicuous consumption?</p>
<p>"
None of these other marketers of luxury goods enjoy a waiver from anti-trust laws and the tax shelter of non-profit status. The question in my mind is why should we the tax payers be granting a tax deduction to some billionaire giving millions of dollars to Harvard University which aleady has a $30 billion endowment it cannot even usefully spend the proceeds of."
Amen! Totally agree!</p>
<p>Does that mean only Harvard or all private and public colleges, and universities including Berea (endowment $800+millions) which needs to raise several millions every year to provide free tuition to poor students, or the University of Wisconsin which ranks very high in terms of both endowment and fund-raising? Where does one draw the line?</p>
<p>
[quote]
The question in my mind is why should we the tax payers be granting a tax deduction to some billionaire giving millions of dollars to Harvard University...
[/quote]
But you could apply this logic to many not-for-profits. I'm not crazy about the idea that some billionaire might donate millions to some church just so it can be used to build an overly-elaborate and overly-expensive building with a fancy gilded facade; deductions for some charities where the officers are flying around in private jets to elaborate dinners and being paid large salaries, and the list goes on and on.</p>
<p>In Harvard's case, it seems that the problem some have is with what they choose to spend it on. Maybe they choose to establish a new research lab with the donated funds rather than use it to reduce tuition. The new research lab affords research opportunities for the students and increases the viability of the institution thereby making the students more desirable in the marketplace. In this example it could be that the student was better served by the addition of the lab than by a tuition reduction. </p>
<p>The solution to taxpayers feeling cheated because of a not-for-profit's decision of how to spend the money might be to eliminate the concept of tax deductions for donations and rely on true philanthropy.</p>
<p>IMHO, I think that any private college that pays no federal tax because of non-profit status should have to prove that it deserves that exemption. Universities which have run up BILLIONS of $$ in investments gains should not be able to claim they are running a non-profit business, as their huge endowments are evidence that would indicate otherwise. I think only colleges that would run a deficit each year with out fundraising each year should be considered a non-profit organization.</p>
<p>Any college that would run a deficit each year would become bankrupt very soon. And some have. And the point of fund-raising is not to fund operational costs out of the raised funds, but to provide endowment. Endowment is then invested so that the institutions can make a profit and this profit is either used to cover operational costs or invested. That is true for both private and public universities.</p>
<p>Colleges and universities endowments (2005)</p>
<p>Rank Institution Endowment1
1. Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.) $25,221,804,000
2. Yale University (New Haven, Conn.) 15,091,021,000
3. Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.) 12,205,035,000
4. Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.) 11,200,000,000
5. Univ. of Texas System Administration (Austin, Tex.) 11,101,608,088
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.) 6,712,400,000
7. Columbia University (New York, N.Y.) 5,190,564,000
8. Univ. of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Mich.) 4,931,338,357
9. Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) 4,454,451,325
10. Washington University (St. Louis, Mo.) 4,383,295,000
11. Univ. of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pa.) 4,369,782,000
12. Emory University (Atlanta, Ga.) 4,347,880,952
13. Univ. of Chicago (Chicago, Ill.) 4,137,494,000
14. Texas A&M University (College Station, Tex.) 4,026,498,479
15. Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.) 3,859,610,000
16. Univ. of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, Ind.) $3,650,224,193
17. Rice University (Houston, Tex.) 3,600,000,000
18. Duke University (Durham, N.C.) 3,292,001,984
19. Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.) 2,776,329,634
20. Univ. of Southern California (Los Angeles, Calif.) 2,746,051,000
21. Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tenn.) 2,598,227,000
22. Univ. of Texas at Austin (Austin, Tex.) 2,346,902,618
23. Univ. of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif.) 2,333,205,000
24. Univ. of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va.) 2,196,644,000
25. Univ. of Minnesota (Minneapolis, Minn.) 2,010,477,153
26. Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md.) 2,009,841,000
27. Brown University (Providence, R.I.) 1,917,632,000
28. Univ. of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Calif.) 1,868,843,000
29. New York University (New York, N.Y.) 1,643,177,000
30. Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio) 1,546,000,000
31. California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, Calif.) 1,520,478,000
32. Williams College (Williamstown, Mass.) 1,514,248,065
33. Univ of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, N.C.) 1,432,550,726
34. University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, Pa.) 1,398,209,000
35. Grinnell College (Grinnell, Iowa) 1,390,545,000
36. University of Washington (Seattle, Wash.) 1,387,891,312
37. University of Rochester (Rochester, N.Y.) 1,368,007,000
38. Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.) 1,340,535,679
39. Boston College (Chestnut Hill, Mass.) 1,328,526,000
40. University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, Wis.) 1,327,022,996
41. Michigan State University (East Lansing, Mich.) 1,324,639,397
42. Pomona College (Claremont, Calif.) 1,298,629,000
43. Wellesley College (Wellesley, Mass.) 1,275,767,000
44. Pennsylvania State University (University Park, Pa.) 1,231,300,000
45. Ohio State University (Columbus, OH) 1,224,418,043
46. University of Richmond (University of Richmond, Va.) 1,207,573,000
47. Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Ga.) 1,206,566,000
48. Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, Pa.) 1,164,069,000
49. Amherst College (Amherst, Mass.) 1,154,569,523
50. Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Tex.) 1,115,775,721</p>
<p><a href="http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112636.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112636.html</a></p>
<p>"Endowment is then invested so that the institutions can make a profit and this profit is either used to cover operational costs or invested. "
So how much "profit" each year should a non-profit institution be allowed to not have to pay taxes on? 10 Million? 100 million? 1 billion? Where does the line get crossed between profit and non-profit? At what point should colleges with billions of dollars of investments that have been accumulated in great part because they don't pay taxes on those investments, be considered for profit? That's the point [I think] that the OP was trying to make.</p>
<p>I'm comfortable, not rich, and it's more than a few calls and letters. They are sneaky, ther are events for those on the campus who give so much. Dinner with the college pres when he visits your town. They are working hard to bring in money above COA from parents. The more involved the parent the more involved jr. will tend to be.</p>
<p>But,hey, a billion dollars doesn't go as far as it used to, you know. ;)</p>
<p>That's a valid question, and I don't know how easy it would be to answer this.
For example, Harvard has a huge endowment, and it expects to spend a huge sum on expanding into Allston, creating more labs, building new dorms, etc... Are these to be considered profit-making activities or part of its educational mission?
Harvard is actually well behind a number of schools, both private and public, in profiting from patents (MIT and UWisc-Madison come to mind). These could actually be considered profit in the accepted sense. Neither, however, have endowments as large as Harvard's, nor, for that matter, are they contemplating a huge building program.</p>
<p>I believe that any gains in college endowments due to the decisions made to invest those endowments in vehicles such as such as hedgefunds, stocks, etc.should be taxed as capital gains. Increases in endowments due to incoming donations would still be tax exempt. I think this would be more equitable for US taxpayers.</p>
<p>Menloparkmom:</p>
<p>Interesting. I had not thought of that. I wonder what it would do to the endowment of various universities.</p>
<p>What exactly is the point of taking money from harvard or yale and putting it into the US Treasury. Hardly a blip in Treasury and you could handicap some top schools in the world--one area the US excels. Even Yale and Stanford had budget problems after the last market correction.</p>
<p>In 1997 Harvard's endowment was just uner $11 billion. decade later it is roughly $30 billion. Harvard is in the investment bankng business, the educational enterprise argueably exists as a tax dodge and a syncture for the universities true owners the faculty.</p>
<p>A more accurate measure of a school's disposable wealth is its endowment on a per pupil basis.</p>
<p>Rank Institution Endowment per Student (2005)</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton University $1,679,380<br></li>
<li>Yale University $1,342,099<br></li>
<li>Harvard University $1,291,051<br></li>
<li>Grinnell College $893,666<br></li>
<li>Pomona College $837,825<br></li>
<li>Swarthmore College $789,735<br></li>
<li>Rice University $726,147<br></li>
<li>Stanford University $714,620<br></li>
<li>Amherst College $698,469 $820,846 [27] </li>
<li>Williams College $666,193<br></li>
<li>California Institute of Technology $653,726<br></li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology $650,430<br></li>
<li>Wellesley College $557,243<br></li>
<li>Dartmouth College $475,859<br></li>
<li>Northwestern University $440,068<br></li>
<li>Baylor College of Medicine $426,326<br></li>
<li>Smith College $361,572<br></li>
<li>Emory University $360,662<br></li>
<li>Washington University in St. Louis $319,015<br></li>
<li>University of Notre Dame $317,991<br></li>
<li>Berry College $290,715 </li>
</ol>
<p>As you can see, there are very few schools that can afford to pay the full tab. Invested at a safe 5% rate of interest, Princeton's $1,679,380 endowment per student would yield approximately $84,000 per student, per year, nearly double that student's annual tuition,and room and board charge.
At #20, Notre Dame's $317,991 per student would only yield approx. $16,000 per student. Not enough.</p>
<p>Note: the current Princeton endowment is more than $2 million per student. These were the numbers the Princeton students were pondering (see article in original post). Clearly, the argument was that Princeton could give everyone a free ride and still have money to reinvest.</p>