4 ms·

legacy student preference is obviously an issue, but my question is why haven't any billionaires started their own universities to compete with the established

legacy student preference is obviously an issue, but my question is why haven't any billionaires started their own universities to compete with the established Ivy league schools that are rejecting talent? Almost all of these elite private universities were started by random rich people and gained prestige over time. Modern rich people seem unambitious compared to people in the past. People forget that Harvard and Stanford are named after people, they weren't always these giant institutions

opportune 3y ago
For starters, there are two schools like that already: MIT and Caltech. I think most people rich enough to pull this can afford to buy their kids into Harvard/Stanford so it would take someone with a real principled interest in this approach. Starting a research university (which you need to attract top professors) from scratch seems really challenging though because you need to build up your grants and either poach existing professors or hire junior ones. You could start a teaching or liberal arts university but a lot of students who want to go on to PHDs or take advanced classes would skip based on that.
EA-3167 3y ago
I guess for the same reason that few of them are building architectural wonders, museums, or really doing anything that isn't totally focused on themselves and their wealth. The closest you get is the "give away half of your wealth to foundations you control, as charity" move that's become very popular. Actually building something for the future, not because it will make you even richer, seems to have fallen out of favor.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Society used to get museums, universities, and great works of art out of the ultra wealthy. Besides SpaceX, not sure what other goods there have been from this social contract recently.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    It's because the guillotine has transitioned from "something my aristocrat grandparents were afraid of" to "ancient history".
  - jakey_bakey 3y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I think what they're doing is very cool, but how exactly has SpaceX created a public good?
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      Internet in the rural parts of the world is being revolutionized.
    - scottLobster 3y ago
      Drastically lowering the cost of access to orbit, potentially providing affordable worldwide internet coverage with performance that isn't dogshit, providing competition for terrestrial cable and traditional satellite networking companies. If one day we do end up with colonies on the Moon and/or Mars, historians will point to SpaceX's drastic lowering of the cost of making it to orbit as one of the critical stepping stones that made it happen. Not only does it directly make such things more possible, but it increases the amount of economic activity that can occur in space, which grows the entire industrial ecosystem and indirectly unlocks even more possibilities in the long run.
  - yostrovs 3y ago
    I believe we are close to saturation of how many museums and universities one can have without them feeling empty.
scottyah 3y ago
They are, off the top of my head Trump started one and Elon made one for all his kids (and some others have joined).
smrtinsert 3y ago
Because the network is more important than anything.
j0hnyl 3y ago
Modern rich people likely think traditional education is bullshit and invest elsewhere. Some initiatives are more or less ambitious than others, but who needs to set money on fire launching a new university when all of the worlds knowledge is conveniently indexed on youtube for any self motivated individual to consume?
jncfhnb 3y ago
Schools don’t make a ton of money from having better students. Endowment money is a really long term play and probably comes from old money rather than new money 99% of the time
zdragnar 3y ago
Harvard didn't have to compete with Harvard. It didn't have to compete with anyone, because it was the very first institution of higher learning, founded to train clergy. Now, with transportation across the country taking mere hours rather than months, a new college would have to compete with every college in the country. On top of that, you need to deal with accreditation and lots of other red tape to even get to the point where you could start attracting the talent that is being rejected, meaning you are competing with top state schools and next-tier private schools.
joeframbach 3y ago
My cynical take is that modern billionaires are billionaires on paper only; not even paper, just rows in some bank database. Utilizing even a fraction of the wealth would lay bare that the wealth doesn't exist in real terms.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  buy, borrow, die They don't have to use it except as collateral for loans.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > My cynical take is that modern billionaires are billionaires on paper only; not even paper, just rows in some bank database. I was disturbed back when Donald Trump was elected that one of the strains of opposition was "he can't function as president because he owns businesses. He should just own stock like a real politician." The supposed concern is that, if you have an actual business going, you may experience conflicts of interest between your business and your political decisions. But (1) categorically excluding anyone who does productive work from holding office is a really terrible (if historically common) idea; and (2) it's not like we never hear complaints about politicians getting into conflicts of interest between their political decisions and their stockholdings.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jacobsenscott 3y ago
Starting universities was just faddish social posturing - "look how much money I have!", combined with the fact that there wasn't a whole lot you could do with excess money in the 19th century beyond building buildings. How many horses can one man have? Today the fads are space flight, or taking over a social media site, or launching a vanity startup, or buying a sports team.
jacobsenscott 3y ago
There are plenty of universities - several in each state. We don't need more. Every flagship state school provides as good an education as any Ivy League. Harvard doesn't have any "secrete knowledge" that isn't taught somewhere else. So a wealthy person is better off contributing to their local public institutions, which happens a lot I think.
drumhead 3y ago
Who wants to deal with all the controversy surrounding admissions and race and freedom of speech and sexism and sexual harrasment, politics and politicians? It's far easier to buy a sports team or fire rockets into space.
scottLobster 3y ago
Because it's a lot easier and a lot more fun to be Bruce Wayne as opposed to Batman. And perhaps that's for the best, sometimes when well-meaning billionaires try new things we just end up with wacky dystopian shit at our expense, like Munger Hall : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXd7Y3HvUj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXd7Y3HvUj4 I'd rather give billionaires the option to waste their money on yachts and meaningless trips to orbit, or give money to charity, than force that largely insecure, incompetent demographic into actual leadership positions. Would be like handing a machine gun to a pissed off chimp that just had its mate stolen. Case in point, look at the account holders of Silicon Valley Bank who had essentially their entire corporate cash reserves, billions collectively, at that one institution. Frankly they all should have been wiped out down to the FDIC limit for such foolishness, but I'm sure as most rich people do they have a mountain of excuses. These people are largely not competent, they took stupid risks and got lucky, but the same stupidity that made them take the risks tends to stick around after they get lucky. Steve Jobs himself had the good fortune to get the rare CURABLE variety of pancreatic cancer, detected early no less, and he turned down standard treatment in favor of some new-age juice-diet bullshit. His stupidity cost him his life, and all the wealth in the world meant nothing. Thank God he never thought to open up a hospital based on his beliefs.

opportune 3y ago

For starters, there are two schools like that already: MIT and Caltech. I think most people rich enough to pull this can afford to buy their kids into Harvard/Stanford so it would take someone with a real principled interest in this approach. Starting a research university (which you need to attract top professors) from scratch seems really challenging though because you need to build up your grants and either poach existing professors or hire junior ones. You could start a teaching or liberal arts university but a lot of students who want to go on to PHDs or take advanced classes would skip based on that.

EA-3167 3y ago

I guess for the same reason that few of them are building architectural wonders, museums, or really doing anything that isn't totally focused on themselves and their wealth. The closest you get is the "give away half of your wealth to foundations you control, as charity" move that's become very popular. Actually building something for the future, not because it will make you even richer, seems to have fallen out of favor.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
Society used to get museums, universities, and great works of art out of the ultra wealthy. Besides SpaceX, not sure what other goods there have been from this social contract recently.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  It's because the guillotine has transitioned from "something my aristocrat grandparents were afraid of" to "ancient history".
- jakey_bakey 3y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I think what they're doing is very cool, but how exactly has SpaceX created a public good?
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Internet in the rural parts of the world is being revolutionized.
  - scottLobster 3y ago
    Drastically lowering the cost of access to orbit, potentially providing affordable worldwide internet coverage with performance that isn't dogshit, providing competition for terrestrial cable and traditional satellite networking companies. If one day we do end up with colonies on the Moon and/or Mars, historians will point to SpaceX's drastic lowering of the cost of making it to orbit as one of the critical stepping stones that made it happen. Not only does it directly make such things more possible, but it increases the amount of economic activity that can occur in space, which grows the entire industrial ecosystem and indirectly unlocks even more possibilities in the long run.
- yostrovs 3y ago
  I believe we are close to saturation of how many museums and universities one can have without them feeling empty.

scottyah 3y ago

They are, off the top of my head Trump started one and Elon made one for all his kids (and some others have joined).

smrtinsert 3y ago

Because the network is more important than anything.

j0hnyl 3y ago

Modern rich people likely think traditional education is bullshit and invest elsewhere. Some initiatives are more or less ambitious than others, but who needs to set money on fire launching a new university when all of the worlds knowledge is conveniently indexed on youtube for any self motivated individual to consume?

jncfhnb 3y ago

Schools don’t make a ton of money from having better students. Endowment money is a really long term play and probably comes from old money rather than new money 99% of the time

zdragnar 3y ago

Harvard didn't have to compete with Harvard. It didn't have to compete with anyone, because it was the very first institution of higher learning, founded to train clergy. Now, with transportation across the country taking mere hours rather than months, a new college would have to compete with every college in the country. On top of that, you need to deal with accreditation and lots of other red tape to even get to the point where you could start attracting the talent that is being rejected, meaning you are competing with top state schools and next-tier private schools.

joeframbach 3y ago

My cynical take is that modern billionaires are billionaires on paper only; not even paper, just rows in some bank database. Utilizing even a fraction of the wealth would lay bare that the wealth doesn't exist in real terms.

HumblyTossed 3y ago
buy, borrow, die They don't have to use it except as collateral for loans.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> My cynical take is that modern billionaires are billionaires on paper only; not even paper, just rows in some bank database. I was disturbed back when Donald Trump was elected that one of the strains of opposition was "he can't function as president because he owns businesses. He should just own stock like a real politician." The supposed concern is that, if you have an actual business going, you may experience conflicts of interest between your business and your political decisions. But (1) categorically excluding anyone who does productive work from holding office is a really terrible (if historically common) idea; and (2) it's not like we never hear complaints about politicians getting into conflicts of interest between their political decisions and their stockholdings.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jacobsenscott 3y ago

Starting universities was just faddish social posturing - "look how much money I have!", combined with the fact that there wasn't a whole lot you could do with excess money in the 19th century beyond building buildings. How many horses can one man have? Today the fads are space flight, or taking over a social media site, or launching a vanity startup, or buying a sports team.

jacobsenscott 3y ago

There are plenty of universities - several in each state. We don't need more. Every flagship state school provides as good an education as any Ivy League. Harvard doesn't have any "secrete knowledge" that isn't taught somewhere else. So a wealthy person is better off contributing to their local public institutions, which happens a lot I think.

drumhead 3y ago

Who wants to deal with all the controversy surrounding admissions and race and freedom of speech and sexism and sexual harrasment, politics and politicians? It's far easier to buy a sports team or fire rockets into space.

scottLobster 3y ago

Because it's a lot easier and a lot more fun to be Bruce Wayne as opposed to Batman. And perhaps that's for the best, sometimes when well-meaning billionaires try new things we just end up with wacky dystopian shit at our expense, like Munger Hall : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXd7Y3HvUj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXd7Y3HvUj4 I'd rather give billionaires the option to waste their money on yachts and meaningless trips to orbit, or give money to charity, than force that largely insecure, incompetent demographic into actual leadership positions. Would be like handing a machine gun to a pissed off chimp that just had its mate stolen. Case in point, look at the account holders of Silicon Valley Bank who had essentially their entire corporate cash reserves, billions collectively, at that one institution. Frankly they all should have been wiped out down to the FDIC limit for such foolishness, but I'm sure as most rich people do they have a mountain of excuses. These people are largely not competent, they took stupid risks and got lucky, but the same stupidity that made them take the risks tends to stick around after they get lucky. Steve Jobs himself had the good fortune to get the rare CURABLE variety of pancreatic cancer, detected early no less, and he turned down standard treatment in favor of some new-age juice-diet bullshit. His stupidity cost him his life, and all the wealth in the world meant nothing. Thank God he never thought to open up a hospital based on his beliefs.