The University received $54.1 million in the 2007-08 Annual Giving campaign, amassing the highest total since the inception of yearly fundraising campaigns in 1940.
This year's total is a $5 million improvement from the 2006-07 campaign, which was also record-breaking.
This year's campaign saw ...(back to the article)
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May I recommend giving to Oxfam instead? Or if you want to support university education in the US, give to a state school where you live?
It won't help you get your kids here, but you'll feel nice inside :P
This quote could just as well refer to Princeton: "Viewed purely in terms of economics, Harvard is really a $40 billion tax-free hedge fund with a very large marketing and PR arm called Harvard University that has the job of raising the investment capital and protecting the fund’s preferential tax treatment."
The Golden Endowment Pot gets bigger, bigger, and bigger, but what does that have to do with the goals of a non-profit organization and higher education?
Princeton is no longer a university, but a banana endowment republic.
Not that I am the first one to mention this, but here goes anyway:
I decided not to give any money to Princeton, though I was contacted by Annual Giving a *number* of times over the last year. It's not because I didn't enjoy going to school--on the contrary, I absolutely loved just about everything in my four years there.
My one major issue is, of course, Princeton's huge endowment: it's been widely reported that Princeton, along with just about every other top-tier, uber-wealthy school, only spends about 1/2 of the money earned from interest that it could responsibly spend every year, according to financial analysts. In other words, the University could be spending a lot more--10's of millions more--each year than it is now. Instead, what we get are quotes like "many of its [the University's] programs rely on Annual Giving to function," as though Princeton absolutely needs the money in order to continue programs like financial aid or the funding of the arts.
So I really have two issues:
1) Princeton continually raises yearly tuition at a rate substantially higher than inflation, though it has the resources not to do so; and
2) More generally, Princeton claims it absolutely needs 10's or 100's of millions every year from alumni in order to function, when that's really not the case.
For me, at least, I decided to put my money into an organization that really does need my contribution.
Sheesh, so demanding P'11! What's 10^3 among friends...
A robust $15.8 million endowment? Proof read!