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MIT Gets $140M Pledge from Anonymous Donor
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hprotagonist 9y agoThat guy with 400 million in bitcoin?
- sillysaurus3 9y agoWho has 148,000 BTC? Besides the FBI?
- pdog 9y agoThe Winklevoss twins. And, of course, the person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eigenvalue 9y agoRoger Ver is said to have 300k btc. He bought them mostly for $1 each.
- csomar 9y agoDidn't the FBI auction those?
- bbcbasic 9y agoWho gives it all away and then gets a nasty tax bill.
- aianus 9y agoNo taxes if you give it away to a registered non-profit as Bitcoin.
- kukabynd 9y agoUnlikely but possible it’s the dude/team behind the DAO fiasco, fits the narrative of ~$150m with subtracted ~$10m for the team and expenses.
- muninn_ 9y agoThey should instead give that money to the schools and organizations that need it. Nothing against MIT, but most kids don't go to MIT. They have a shitload of money. Give it to a community college if you want more impact.
- tantalor 9y agoThat's the gist of http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/06-my-little-hundred-million http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/06-my-little-hundred-...
- muninn_ 9y agoInteresting. Will check it out!
- DuskStar 9y agoI'm going to have to disagree here - while this donation may be less impactful to MIT than it would have been to XYZ Community College, the graduates and research of MIT will probably have a far larger impact on the world than those of XYZ. I'd expect a greater benefit from pushing the bleeding edge just that little bit farther, if that makes any sense.
- nickpsecurity 9y ago"XYZ Community College" Another false dilemma between MIT and XYZ Community College. There's all sorts of Universities and probably some community colleges with teams that are doing great work with way, way less than billions in funding. There's chances for great impact if they likewise get the piles of money MIT has been using to do great impact on top of brand name and connections. It will take time for the smaller players to develop the latter but they can use the former immediately.
- muninn_ 9y agoIt's just a suggestion. It very well could be that giving money to MIT is the best thing to do.
- nickpsecurity 9y agoGreat, an organization that's rich enough to waste money on piles of BS research and toys gets a pledge of money instead of a cash-strapped one with bright people that have lots of potential they can't act on.
- daveed 9y agoThere are plenty of people with the money who don't donate it at all. What's the use of this?
- nickpsecurity 9y agoI agree. It's why my original comment implied they should donate it to people with potential to do good to great things with it that aren't receiving many donations because they're not MIT or something. The MIT that already has over $10 billion endowment. http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2016/09/12/mits-13-2b-endowment-generated-small-investment.html http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2016/09/12/mits-13-2b... So, lets give MIT more money they don't need while smart people everywhere else continue to get anywhere from less to near nothing depending on institution or area.
- sharkjacobs 9y ago~1% of their 13 billion dollar endowment. that's somehow both more and less significant than I had expected
- rhaps0dy 9y agoSounds like your expectation of the percentage (or of the total endowment) used to follow a bimodal distribution. Or that you expected the 1% to be higher and the 13 billion to be lower, which is the same thing. (Or the reverse of this last thing.)
- wavefunction 9y agoCarnegie at least funded libraries across the country, from New York City to Podunk, USA.
- apersona 9y agoHow did you know that the donor didn't do the same?
- wavefunction 9y agoAs far as I can tell there is no wave of new libraries that would suggest such an occurrence. Perhaps you want to point out some evidence I've missed? Finally, I'll note that your post is a mis-inference of the point of my own.
- finolex1 9y agoIt would be interesting to compare the utility of one large $100 million+ grant to an institution like MIT, Yale or Harvard that is already well-endowed, compared to a hundred different million dollar grants to institutions across the USA or the world, where the money might arguably be more effectively used or sorely needed. The counterpoint would be that the money could support fundamental research that eventually results in a much larger payoff to the world at large, but I'm not convinced that this outweighs the benefits of funding hundreds, or even thousands of students/scientists in less prominent schools who might go on to make such discoveries themselves. Of course, all this assumes that donor's primary aim is to make the largest possible impact, when in all likelihood it's motivated more by an affinity for the school, or in the case of other donors, prestige from having their name on the walls.
- hertclef 9y agoHighly relevant to your comment is episode 6 of Malcomb Gladwell's Revisionist History Podcast [0]. In the episode, Gladwell asks the president of Stanford whether there was any amount of money he would turn down because he thought it would better spent somewhere else. He replied, somewhat evasively, that no, there wasn't really an sum large enough. It's a truly incredible interview to listen to. I highly recommend the three part series about college education that makes up episodes 4,5,6 of the season 1. But, if you have the time, I think the entire podcast is excellent while noting that I am not a huge fan of Gladwell's books. [0] http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/06-my-little-hundred-million http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/06-my-little-hundred-...
- Cyph0n 9y ago> asks the president of Stanford Interesting tidbit: the president of Stanford at the time was John Hennessy. Take any modern CPU, and you'll probably find that much of its internal architecture is built on work by Hennessy and his group at Stanford. He is arguably the greatest computer architect of all time.
- deepnotderp 9y ago
- durpleDrank 9y agoI'm sorry but I can't help but be reminded of this Curb Your Enthusiasm episode http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049250/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049250/
- seibelj 9y agoHey! Ya know what HN? It's fucking awesome that $140m was given to one of the finest institutions in the entire world, rather than pissed away like so many other fortunes. I'm sorry it didn't fit [insert pet issue that needs money]. More rich people should do this! And anonymously donated too! Feels good
- wyldfire 9y agoI think it's definitely nice for philanthropists to give to institutions for higher education. But I also think it's valuable to critically evaluate how the money is spent because there's an opportunity cost to any expenditure. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of being spent on a new academic facility, or administrators' salaries, that it was instead used to offset tuition or directly fund research?
- cheriot 9y agoAre you suggesting the donor should have specified how the money is spent? 80% of the money MIT has raised is restricted to specific uses, but the less sexy things like salaries and office supplies are still required for the organization to run.
- ceejayoz 9y agoI think the suggestion is that MIT has more than enough money (and access to money) and there are less well-funded institutions and causes where $140M might move the needle more significantly.
- bpchaps 9y agoI'd be curious if one of the unspoken goals is to make people outraged enough by the donation to make donations to smaller institutions. Wishful thinking?
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
- myroon5 9y agoFull text: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced that it had received a $140 million pledge from a graduate of the school—with no name, and no strings attached. An unrestricted gift of that size is rare in higher education, as donors often want a say in how their dollars are spent. Unrestricted donations can be used for things like facilities upkeep, as well as to pursue early-state scientific research. In the past, MIT has put unrestricted funds toward online learning and Alzheimer’s research, as well as scholarships. MIT said in a news release Wednesday that it would “invest in daring, high-risk ideas; address some of the world’s most urgent challenges; and sustain support for students, faculty, and the physical campus.” MIT is in the second year of the public phase of its $5 billion fundraising campaign, and has already brought in $3.4 billion. So far, roughly 20% of that is unrestricted. “No one has ever made it through life without someone else’s help. As a past recipient of MIT’s generous financial aid, I benefited tremendously from the opportunity to pursue my MIT education and am extremely appreciative of all the ways that MIT has shaped me,” the anonymous donor said in a statement shared by MIT. “I am blessed to be able to give back to the Institute so other students can experience what I did, and so that the Institute can continue to excel in groundbreaking achievements.” The largest gift to MIT was pledged in 2000, when International Data Group founder and chairman Patrick McGovern Jr. , and his wife Lore Harp McGovern, committed $350 million over 20 years for a brain research institute.
- vit05 9y ago>pledge from a graduate of the school That is the most important part. He is saying: use that money to help others like you helped me.
- jdironman 9y agoIn that he wasn't really financially able to attend MIT as most are. I feel like he is saying, help those less fortunate.
- runako 9y ago> financially able to attend MIT as most are In fact, the vast majority of MIT undergraduates receive financial aid. About a third of MIT undergraduates attend without paying tuition, and over half of undergraduates receive a need-based scholarship (i.e. they are not rich). http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html
- curiousDog 9y agoProbably Drew Houston of Dropbox ;)
- eigenvalue 9y agoI had the same thought.
- lgats 9y agoRead without a subscription https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/mit-gets-140-million-pledge-from-anonymous-donor-1496866275 https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/mit-gets-140-million-pledge...
- nafizh 9y agoThere is this perception(not invalid) that more research money should go to the best schools because that would result in more impactful research. I, myself don't quite disagree with that. But one of the claims for this argument that a huge donation suddenly doesn't turn a bad school into a good one is a strawman argument. Things don't have to be so extreme. There are plenty of middle tier schools specially state schools where amazing research is happening, and there are brilliant researchers who can also make use of that money having huge impact on the world. These schools already have very advanced infrastructure to utilize additional research money. But as a graduate student in a state school, I might be biased.
- apersona 9y ago> But one of the claims for this argument that a huge donation suddenly doesn't turn a bad school into a good one is a strawman argument. Things don't have to be so extreme. There are plenty of middle tier schools specially state schools Yeah, but it sounds like you're also making the assumption that state schools don't get endowments either. I'm from a state school and the last campaign we had raised ~$20M. Admittedly, it's not even close to the pledge, but it's not like state schools are getting absolutely no funding either.
- bachmeier 9y agoI agree with you. It is natural to think that this is a simple problem - give money to the very best university and get the best research. Unfortunately, like many things, it's not quite that simple. Is there any reason to think that research at MIT has been limited by lack of funding? That seems highly implausible to me. And if the answer is that MIT could hire additional researchers to do more research with that money, those researchers can do the same research with that money at many other schools. It's not clear to me that giving the money to MIT will result in any more research, and a good chance that it will result in less, because researchers at other universities currently are limited by financial constraints.
- akhilcacharya 9y ago>But as a graduate student in a state school, I might be biased. As an undergrad at a middle tier state school that at times does cool research, I'm with you here. Ivory tower elitism is a hell of a drug, and it just makes me sad.
- m-p-3 9y agoIf you want to bypass the paywall, use this bookmarklet javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);
- hobarrera 9y agoSame paywall for me.
- peter303 9y agoAfter I turned 50 the faculty and administration of MIT got real friendly about alumni legacy grants. Before then they barely gave you the time of day.
- otsedom 9y agoThis should be imitated all around the globe, in this way more research, new jobs and a better society is possible. The National University of Engineering (UNI) needs this such funds. For sure this money will return more Zuckerbergs, Gates, Khan, Bose, OCW, EDX... to the world.
- cyphunk 9y agoYay, now all students enrolled go for free! sike
- deavmi 9y agoWsj makes me pay to read their shit. Fuck them.
- iampoul 9y agoWouldn't it be funny if it's Dolph Lundgren.
- nstj 9y agoDon't tell anyone but I'm pretty certain the donation was from Ted Danson.
- jeddev 9y agoDoes anyone have an account I could use to read this? Wall Street Journal are seemingly trying to limit their audience by shrinking their online reach by charging people to read their content. I would much rather them show me some adverts at the side than have to pay to read one article by them every month or so.
- learntofly 9y agohttp://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit-gets-140-million-pledge-from-anonymous-donor-1496866275 http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit... Credit: a HN news poster from a few months noticed that by prefixing: http://facebook.com/l.php?u= http://facebook.com/l.php?u= You can avoid the paywall