Look at what they've been doing, especially around construction. Part of it goes towards interest payments on bonds they issued to pay for new buildings. Part of it goes towards the staff and maintenance of those buildings. Part of it goes towards administration. Whatever is left is used to the benefit of students. Now, when I see a campus with construction projects, or planned construction, I don't think that's great I see it as another expensive boondoggle university administrators are engaging in.
Yes. A lot of donations to schools are earmarked for specific things like libraries and sports complexes bearing the donor’s name. The university is then forced to hire all kinds of staff to run and maintain these buildings, lest they ruin their reputation by allowing the fancy buildings to fall into disrepair.
Donations that are earmarked to help students are in the form of scholarships and bursaries. To be honest, there aren’t nearly enough of those to go around.
>The university is then forced to hire all kinds of staff to run and maintain these buildings, lest they ruin their reputation by allowing the fancy buildings to fall into disrepair.
I talked with one of my professors at Iowa State about this topic. He said back in the day, donors only needed to pay the cost of the building and then the university would get hit with tons of maintenance and utility expenses.
For some time now, they have to donate the cost of the building and money for an endowment for expected maintenance costs and operating costs.
Fancy buildings are a marketing tool for schools, even if they're unneeded. Schools would rather raise tuition and compete for ever-wealthier students than refuse a shiny new building.
Yale and Harvard seem to have hit upon a successful model. The university is actually a hedge fund that educates young people on the side in order to cultivate a lifelong client base of alumni and donors. It's ironic that the Mormon church seems to function the same way Harvard does but without the education component, just the social club system.