←back to thread

581 points gnabgib | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
araes ◴[] No.42196753[source]
Started looking and found out there's some much worse, and far more obvious cases that need to implement these reforms. [1]

UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000 endowment fund that went up +170% over 10 years while Philadelphia rots with drug use, poverty, and gun violence.

BTW, amazing site to be horrified by gun violence (and vaguely fascinated). Look upon the awfulness of Philadelphia. [2] Sitting in their safe little haven while East and South is wounding murder land with overlapping murder / wounding statistics. (12k from 2014-2023, 190/100000 urban) [3] Northwestern and the violence everywhere South in Chi-town is maybe a personal second choice. ($13,700,000,000, +74%, 26.9k, 280/100000 urban) [4][5]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...

[2] (Guns, Philadelphia) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...

[3] (Location, UPenn) https://www.google.com/maps/place/University+of+Pennsylvania...

[4] (Guns, Chicago) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...

[5] (Location, Northwestern) https://www.google.com/maps/place/Northwestern+University/@4...

replies(11): >>42196780 #>>42197216 #>>42197243 #>>42197247 #>>42197346 #>>42197616 #>>42198654 #>>42198833 #>>42199711 #>>42200472 #>>42200996 #
ciupicri ◴[] No.42197243[source]
So if a university has money, learning there should be free?

If you don't have guns, you won't have gun violence, but I guess the second amendment won't be changed any time soon.

replies(2): >>42197348 #>>42198682 #
tdeck ◴[] No.42197348[source]
> So if a university has money, learning there should be free?

Not an unreasonable proposition. The purpose of the university is ostensibly to provide an education, not to continue hoarding more and more money.

replies(1): >>42197546 #
JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.42197546[source]
> purpose of the university is ostensibly to provide an education

One of the purposes. They’re also centres for learning and research and repositories of knowledge.

replies(3): >>42198438 #>>42198515 #>>42198955 #
tdeck ◴[] No.42198515[source]
If they were spending the money on those things, this might be an argument. But they're not spending it; they're hoarding it.
replies(4): >>42198659 #>>42198751 #>>42198808 #>>42199208 #
jjk166 ◴[] No.42198751[source]
I don't think you understand how endowments work.

It's not a pile of gold sitting in a vault on campus. It's an account which is productively invested and generating returns which are what's actually used for funding operations. A $20 billion endowment would be expected to produce about $1 billion per year, or around 20% of the annual operating budget. They need to bring in about $4 Billion more dollars per year to keep the lights on.

replies(1): >>42199266 #
1. tdeck ◴[] No.42199266[source]
I do understand actually, and my argument is that this wouldn't be acceptable in any other category of nonprofit, so why is it acceptable for universities? If the Red Cross decided to take donations and then hoard a 20 billion dollar endowment while also charging top dollar for disaster relief, people wouldn't accept that as a legitimate strategy. Why is it suddenly OK when a university does it?