8 ms·

I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am

I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each Absent data, it's difficult to say. There are economies of scale, even if just in experience administering such projects.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  I haven't checked the numbers lately, so I could be wrong by now. But while I was a student there and for some years after (administrators / (students + researchers + educators)) got worse at a rapid pace. It's hard for me to imagine that Stanford is the best marginal bang for more bucks.
- scythe 4y ago
  In order to have an economy of scale, first you need scale. But Stanford does not stand out in terms of the size of its faculty or enrollment, certainly not to the degree it does in terms of money. In fact, Stanford has fewer tenured faculty members (832) than UC Davis (1,126): https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/academic-life/faculty-composition/ https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/... https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-california-davis/academic-life/faculty-composition/ https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo...
  - pmyteh 4y ago
    There are diseconomies of scale too. My experience is mostly of UK higher education, but my feeling is that most universities are a bit too large for their governing structures, and are poorly run as a result.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
supersync 4y ago
This is a very fair concern. First off, most of this funding will go to a building. The rest will go mostly to an endowment. The concentration of mega-gifts at the top has very perverse impacts. Harvard built a $100M building a few years ago that is used by a total of 100 people a year. Philanthropy combines prestige, PR, and “legacy” in a way that massively overvalued those three vs. any kind of measurable impact. The alternative you are suggesting is badly, badly needed in the non-profit world. But the “brand” game has won vs the execution game, esp. in higher Ed.
- Invictus0 4y ago
  > Harvard built a $100M building a few years ago that is used by a total of 100 people a year. Which building is that? Not doubting you, just curious.
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  John wanted his name on the Doerr.
  - jayzalowitz 4y ago
    Words cannot describe, should have sent a poet.
    - asciii 4y ago
      Ho Doerr?
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >But the “brand” game has won vs the execution game, esp. in higher Ed. I can remember seeing this in action at Stanford. Companies will fall over themselves and pay anything to have their name associated with absolutely anything that has the name Stanford on it. And the students know this, so they play the game. Every student group, organization, club, etc. no matter how small or meaningless is heavily sponsored by relevant corporate donors as a result.
- 4y ago
ensan 4y ago
Isn't there a tax deduction aspect to a lot of these donations? Anyways, 100 more Nature-level articles about climate change is not going to change the situation if there is no political will (or if it seesaws every 4-8 years at best).
- jgalt212 4y ago
  Indeed. It probably would have been much better to plant $1B worth of trees, or buy $1B of the Brazilian Rain Forest. But for similar reasons that Robert Moses loved bridges and hated tunnels, putting your name on a building at Stanford wins.
- KMag 4y ago
  There are some loopholes with donations, mostly regarding difficult-to-value benefits and also around donating dificult-to-value things rather than cash, stocks, and/or bonds. But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times the size of the donation. There are limits and caveats, but in general, it's a pretty fair treatment. I'm pretty sure big donors generally under-report the value of having their name on a building, etc. However, I believe it's nearly impossible to wind up with more money in your pocket post-tax by donating cash instead of keeping the cash. (I'm not an accountant. This isn't tax advice.) I'm not saying you in particular are claiming people are donating cash out of greed, but the way I hear some people talk about tax write-offs is very misleading. It seems many Americans believe that donating $1.1 billion in cash can result in a $1.1 billion reduction in tax owed (assuming a marginal tax rate under 100%). Presumably, someone that wealthy gets their marginal tax rate down around the long-term capital gains rate, so they're probably getting about $165 million in tax reduction in exchange for that $1.1 billion donation. (Again, I'm not an accountant. This isn't tax advice.) (Now, one could buy $1 million in art, get it appraised for $4 million, and if your marginal tax rate is under 25%, get more than $1 million knocked off your tax bill. Like I said, there are some loopholes in valuation, but not for cash and marketable securities.) That being said, it would be nice to see something where getting your name on a building or an event in your honor would come with some automatic accounting assumption that the value of the publicity is worth at least 25% of the donation. If you want the full write-off, take your name off the building.
tshaddox 4y ago
There's an old Malcolm Gladwell podcast where he interviews (and attempts to skewer) then President of Stanford University John L. Hennessy precisely on the topic of Stanford continuing to solicit donations and increase its ambitions despite having a very large amount of money. I actually think Gladwell's arguments are mostly ridiculous, especially his "accusation" that Hennessy is a "strong link" thinker. But the topic and the interview are interesting. That podcast episode: https://omny.fm/shows/revisionist-history/my-little-hundred-million https://omny.fm/shows/revisionist-history/my-little-hundred-... I found a partial transcript of the episode: https://www.simonsays.ai/blog/my-little-hundred-million-with-malcolm-gladwell-s1-e6-revisionist-history-podcast-transcript-e1942c633432 https://www.simonsays.ai/blog/my-little-hundred-million-with...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rgrieselhuber 4y ago
It would be great to repurpose the majority of endowment funds to repay student loan debt.
usrn 4y ago
idk what exactly a "good school" is. I wasn't exactly impressed with the last set of lectures I watched from Stanford.
- TrackerFF 4y ago
  I think it's important to divide elite schools into undergrad and research. During undergrad, the benefits are plenty. Brand name, excellent on-campus recruitment, bright and/or highly driven peer students, valuable networking opportunities, challenging coursework if you want it. But with that said, taking Calc 1 at most elite schools isn't too different from taking calc 1 at some random school way down the (ranking) list. The syllabus will be the same, quality of your lecturer could go either way. At the undergrad level, there's really not much as far as "cutting edge" goes - after all, you're there to learn the fundamentals. I'd say that it is at the research level that you'll start to see real payoffs. Mostly because these schools tend to attract top talent in the different fields, and have the funds to pay for them. And there's a pipeline between elite academia, and elite private (industry) research groups.
suyash 4y ago
Yes, even 10M for 100 Univ's and make Stanford one of them and then give more to which ever Univ makes most progress to the cause. One would think he would know how to hedge his money across since he is a VC.
renewiltord 4y ago
Well, there are 300 million of us. With $3 each, we could do what this guy did. So, fine, I'll have a friend give $5 on my behalf to a 2nd tier school. Your turn. https://imgur.com/a/H6vEUsY https://imgur.com/a/H6vEUsY Post here when each of you who are concerned have shown your concern through your own action.
markdown 4y ago
$100M to the University of the South Pacific would have a massive, massive impact.
eevilspock 4y ago
I read a great article about Catalytic Philanthropy many years ago. For the irony, I submitted a Stanford hosted copy to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31265490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31265490 Read the first three paragraphs, and then you won't be able to stop.
metacritic12 4y ago
Is that true though? There's the idea of the 10x programmer, and from looking at academia, such thing as a 10x researcher as well. In biology, the median 100th-ranked university professor is making incredibly incremental contributions (like applying a well known technique to the 300th gene). The average top university professor is making groundbreaking achievements. I almost view it as the opposite -- if you gave the Watson and Crick lab (back in its heyday) $100, much more real impactful science would result compared to giving 100 me-too scientists $1.
- namdnay 4y ago
  A good programmer doesn’t take suck their talent from other programmers around them. Giving so much to a handful of establishments sucks up the best researchers and projects
- grinich 4y ago
  Or even better, Rosalind Franklin.
- mupuff1234 4y ago
  But if we compare it to the stock market - it's almost always better to buy the index instead of picking individual stocks.
- geoalchimista 4y ago
  With hindsight, yes. It is difficult to predict which field/researcher may become the 10x and which may not. Even an expert panel may have difficulty in judging the prospect of completely novel research. Giving funds only to 10x researchers is akin to investing in stocks that only go up; it sounds appealing, but in reality, how could a funder like NIH or NSF tell who is the 10x?
- sfriedr 4y ago
  This comparison is misleading, because it is based on a wrong perspective of how research works: In programming, if everyone would "just" be good enough, everyone could the elusive 10x programmer. In research, even if everyone would be the equivalent of the 10x programmer, there is simply often a lot of "boring" work to be done, such as what you dismissed as incredibly incremental contribution, to prepare the foundation for the next breakthrough. That means that "10x researchers" could, for various reasons including luck, end up in the 100th percentile because they have chosen a field that is not yet ready for a breakthrough (think, e.g. ML researchers slogging through the AI winter, wo didn't stick with ML until hardware became fast enough). Being the person making the groundbraking achievements means standing "on the shoulder of giants" as someone said a few centuries ago. I wouldn't be surprised if today there are more "10x researchers" out there than there are breakthroughs waiting to be made.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each Absent data, it's difficult to say. There are economies of scale, even if just in experience administering such projects.

zbrozek 4y ago
I haven't checked the numbers lately, so I could be wrong by now. But while I was a student there and for some years after (administrators / (students + researchers + educators)) got worse at a rapid pace. It's hard for me to imagine that Stanford is the best marginal bang for more bucks.
scythe 4y ago
In order to have an economy of scale, first you need scale. But Stanford does not stand out in terms of the size of its faculty or enrollment, certainly not to the degree it does in terms of money. In fact, Stanford has fewer tenured faculty members (832) than UC Davis (1,126): https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/academic-life/faculty-composition/ https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/... https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-california-davis/academic-life/faculty-composition/ https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo...
- pmyteh 4y ago
  There are diseconomies of scale too. My experience is mostly of UK higher education, but my feeling is that most universities are a bit too large for their governing structures, and are poorly run as a result.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

supersync 4y ago

This is a very fair concern. First off, most of this funding will go to a building. The rest will go mostly to an endowment. The concentration of mega-gifts at the top has very perverse impacts. Harvard built a $100M building a few years ago that is used by a total of 100 people a year. Philanthropy combines prestige, PR, and “legacy” in a way that massively overvalued those three vs. any kind of measurable impact. The alternative you are suggesting is badly, badly needed in the non-profit world. But the “brand” game has won vs the execution game, esp. in higher Ed.

Invictus0 4y ago
> Harvard built a $100M building a few years ago that is used by a total of 100 people a year. Which building is that? Not doubting you, just curious.
devoutsalsa 4y ago
John wanted his name on the Doerr.
- jayzalowitz 4y ago
  Words cannot describe, should have sent a poet.
  - asciii 4y ago
    Ho Doerr?
ramesh31 4y ago
>But the “brand” game has won vs the execution game, esp. in higher Ed. I can remember seeing this in action at Stanford. Companies will fall over themselves and pay anything to have their name associated with absolutely anything that has the name Stanford on it. And the students know this, so they play the game. Every student group, organization, club, etc. no matter how small or meaningless is heavily sponsored by relevant corporate donors as a result.
4y ago

ensan 4y ago

Isn't there a tax deduction aspect to a lot of these donations? Anyways, 100 more Nature-level articles about climate change is not going to change the situation if there is no political will (or if it seesaws every 4-8 years at best).

jgalt212 4y ago
Indeed. It probably would have been much better to plant $1B worth of trees, or buy $1B of the Brazilian Rain Forest. But for similar reasons that Robert Moses loved bridges and hated tunnels, putting your name on a building at Stanford wins.
KMag 4y ago
There are some loopholes with donations, mostly regarding difficult-to-value benefits and also around donating dificult-to-value things rather than cash, stocks, and/or bonds. But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times the size of the donation. There are limits and caveats, but in general, it's a pretty fair treatment. I'm pretty sure big donors generally under-report the value of having their name on a building, etc. However, I believe it's nearly impossible to wind up with more money in your pocket post-tax by donating cash instead of keeping the cash. (I'm not an accountant. This isn't tax advice.) I'm not saying you in particular are claiming people are donating cash out of greed, but the way I hear some people talk about tax write-offs is very misleading. It seems many Americans believe that donating $1.1 billion in cash can result in a $1.1 billion reduction in tax owed (assuming a marginal tax rate under 100%). Presumably, someone that wealthy gets their marginal tax rate down around the long-term capital gains rate, so they're probably getting about $165 million in tax reduction in exchange for that $1.1 billion donation. (Again, I'm not an accountant. This isn't tax advice.) (Now, one could buy $1 million in art, get it appraised for $4 million, and if your marginal tax rate is under 25%, get more than $1 million knocked off your tax bill. Like I said, there are some loopholes in valuation, but not for cash and marketable securities.) That being said, it would be nice to see something where getting your name on a building or an event in your honor would come with some automatic accounting assumption that the value of the publicity is worth at least 25% of the donation. If you want the full write-off, take your name off the building.

tshaddox 4y ago

There's an old Malcolm Gladwell podcast where he interviews (and attempts to skewer) then President of Stanford University John L. Hennessy precisely on the topic of Stanford continuing to solicit donations and increase its ambitions despite having a very large amount of money. I actually think Gladwell's arguments are mostly ridiculous, especially his "accusation" that Hennessy is a "strong link" thinker. But the topic and the interview are interesting. That podcast episode: https://omny.fm/shows/revisionist-history/my-little-hundred-million https://omny.fm/shows/revisionist-history/my-little-hundred-... I found a partial transcript of the episode: https://www.simonsays.ai/blog/my-little-hundred-million-with-malcolm-gladwell-s1-e6-revisionist-history-podcast-transcript-e1942c633432 https://www.simonsays.ai/blog/my-little-hundred-million-with...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

It would be great to repurpose the majority of endowment funds to repay student loan debt.

usrn 4y ago

idk what exactly a "good school" is. I wasn't exactly impressed with the last set of lectures I watched from Stanford.

TrackerFF 4y ago
I think it's important to divide elite schools into undergrad and research. During undergrad, the benefits are plenty. Brand name, excellent on-campus recruitment, bright and/or highly driven peer students, valuable networking opportunities, challenging coursework if you want it. But with that said, taking Calc 1 at most elite schools isn't too different from taking calc 1 at some random school way down the (ranking) list. The syllabus will be the same, quality of your lecturer could go either way. At the undergrad level, there's really not much as far as "cutting edge" goes - after all, you're there to learn the fundamentals. I'd say that it is at the research level that you'll start to see real payoffs. Mostly because these schools tend to attract top talent in the different fields, and have the funds to pay for them. And there's a pipeline between elite academia, and elite private (industry) research groups.

suyash 4y ago

Yes, even 10M for 100 Univ's and make Stanford one of them and then give more to which ever Univ makes most progress to the cause. One would think he would know how to hedge his money across since he is a VC.

renewiltord 4y ago

Well, there are 300 million of us. With $3 each, we could do what this guy did. So, fine, I'll have a friend give $5 on my behalf to a 2nd tier school. Your turn. https://imgur.com/a/H6vEUsY https://imgur.com/a/H6vEUsY Post here when each of you who are concerned have shown your concern through your own action.

markdown 4y ago

$100M to the University of the South Pacific would have a massive, massive impact.

eevilspock 4y ago

I read a great article about Catalytic Philanthropy many years ago. For the irony, I submitted a Stanford hosted copy to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31265490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31265490 Read the first three paragraphs, and then you won't be able to stop.

metacritic12 4y ago

Is that true though? There's the idea of the 10x programmer, and from looking at academia, such thing as a 10x researcher as well. In biology, the median 100th-ranked university professor is making incredibly incremental contributions (like applying a well known technique to the 300th gene). The average top university professor is making groundbreaking achievements. I almost view it as the opposite -- if you gave the Watson and Crick lab (back in its heyday) $100, much more real impactful science would result compared to giving 100 me-too scientists $1.

namdnay 4y ago
A good programmer doesn’t take suck their talent from other programmers around them. Giving so much to a handful of establishments sucks up the best researchers and projects
grinich 4y ago
Or even better, Rosalind Franklin.
mupuff1234 4y ago
But if we compare it to the stock market - it's almost always better to buy the index instead of picking individual stocks.
geoalchimista 4y ago
With hindsight, yes. It is difficult to predict which field/researcher may become the 10x and which may not. Even an expert panel may have difficulty in judging the prospect of completely novel research. Giving funds only to 10x researchers is akin to investing in stocks that only go up; it sounds appealing, but in reality, how could a funder like NIH or NSF tell who is the 10x?
sfriedr 4y ago
This comparison is misleading, because it is based on a wrong perspective of how research works: In programming, if everyone would "just" be good enough, everyone could the elusive 10x programmer. In research, even if everyone would be the equivalent of the 10x programmer, there is simply often a lot of "boring" work to be done, such as what you dismissed as incredibly incremental contribution, to prepare the foundation for the next breakthrough. That means that "10x researchers" could, for various reasons including luck, end up in the 100th percentile because they have chosen a field that is not yet ready for a breakthrough (think, e.g. ML researchers slogging through the AI winter, wo didn't stick with ML until hardware became fast enough). Being the person making the groundbraking achievements means standing "on the shoulder of giants" as someone said a few centuries ago. I wouldn't be surprised if today there are more "10x researchers" out there than there are breakthroughs waiting to be made.