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Yale's "huge losses" are likely FAR less than other schools. Yale's 25 percent estimate includes estimated losses on both illiquid and liquid assets. In contrast, Harvard lost 22 percent on purely liquid securities – without factoring in other losses like Yale did -- in September through November (Yale also said what they lost on securities during this period and they lost a little over 10 percent). Unlike HPS, Yale has NOT instituted any hiring freezes etc.
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<p>All of this is really irrelevant--it doesn't matter that Yale lost comparatively less (as a percent), or that it lost less than a school that isn't even in this discussion. The fact is, its endowment is now about $6 billion lower than what it was before.</p>
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Your whole endowment equivalent of donations is silly (you don’t have the proper evidence but are just essentially inventing information and donations add less than earnings/losses on investments anyways).
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<p>How is it silly? Each university needs to spend money; only 5% of the endowment is spent, and the rest comes from various other sources--student tuition, donations, etc. You can't deny that donations are a huge part of a private university--that's why they constantly solicit their alumni.</p>
<p>Now, someone was making an argument that Yale is "more wealthy," probably because of its superficially larger endowment. But as we established, only a small part of the endowment is spent each year, and so other sources will matter much more. If you take these into consideration, Stanford is as wealthy as Yale, if not more so. Thus, we need to find a common ground of comparison--in this case, converting it to "endowment terms." This is the same method used when comparing private schools to public schools (in which you have to convert government revenues' spending power to "endowment terms"). Thus, the idea that Yale is "superior" because it can offer its students more since its endowment is larger is plain false.</p>
<p>None of the above figures are made up; google the total donations by school. Google the % endowment that each spends. And as JHS said, the above analysis doesn't even count all of Stanford's lands, real estate, etc.</p>
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Stanford is beautiful, and Yale is beautiful. However, I think it is fair to say that a lot of Stanford’s beauty is from the natural landscape whereas Yale’s beauty comes more from the intricacies of the buildings themselves.
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<p>I don't know why this is being contested, but I'd say that Stanford's beauty also comes largely because of its buildings, which are beautiful as well--many of them are very intricate (ever seen Stanford's quad? Encina Hall? Jordan Hall? Toyon Hall?). You can't put plain buildings in a pretty landscape and expect people to see it as beautiful.</p>
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You cannot call Stanford’s 11-12 groups “residential colleges” without being grossly unrealistic. The Yale Res. College system is unique (except for Oxbridge), and no other Am university has something comparable – even the House system at Harvard pales in comparison.
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<p>You make the statement that Stanford's groups of dorms are not residential colleges, but then you just go on to say the same thing over and over again (without proving anything).</p>
<p>Note, also, that I never said the clusters of dorms are residential colleges, but that they could be called them, since they have similar characteristics. But as I said, they have different systems of housing, i.e. Stanford has the draw, whereas Yale assigns its undergrads to a college for their four years, etc.</p>
<p>Let's look at the similarities--Yale's colleges have:
-a master -- Stanford has residence deans for each cluster
-a dean -- Stanford has an academic director
-resident fellows -- Stanford has the same for each dorm in the cluster (sometimes multiple RFs)
-dining hall -- Stanford has one for each
-common areas -- Stanford has that for each dorm, as well as common areas for the entire cluster (courtyard in Wilbur, courtyard in Toyon, etc.)</p>
<p>The facilities that each cluster has varies--a library, or a field, or basketball courts, etc. And then of course there are pool tables, ping pong tables, pianos, cafes (Cyber Cafe in Stern, Late Night in Lagunita, etc.), and so on, within the dorms.</p>
<p>They're not the same, but are similar.</p>
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-“Yale is still trying to build much of the infrastructure to keep up with Stanford, infrastructure that Stanford has long had.” Simply, no! Yale is not just playing some kind of “catch up” merely because it is expanding or has expanded so much infrastructure – it is positioning itself for the next century! This is a logical fallacy: you can't reasonably say that merely because there is construction means that Yale is worse off because they couldn't possibly have had nice facilities earlier (rather, Yale is trying to further distance themselves from the competition).
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<p>I'm not saying Yale doesn't have any infrastructure; that wouldn't make sense at all. I'm saying that Yale is playing catchup in areas that Stanford has long been strong in--namely, engineering and other sciences (though not all). And it still hasn't caught up in those areas--Stanford is still better in those areas, easily. Likewise, Stanford is playing catchup in the arts, where Yale has long been strong and where Yale has more infrastructure than Stanford. (However, Stanford has typically still been ranked in the top 10 in the arts and humanities, whereas Yale isn't even on the map for engineering, and barely on it for some of the sciences.)</p>