9 ms·

Buy Me a Chair: The wacky world of university endowments

64 points by jseliger 3y ago

dang 3y ago
Related: Ask HN: How to convince my parents to buy me a good chair? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=585571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=585571 - April 2009 (7 comments) (I'm joking)
- chihuahua 3y ago
  During the early days of Covid, Microsoft bought me an Aeron chair with all the bells and whistles. It didn't even take any convincing. They just said "here's $$$$ kid, go buy yourself some office equipment"
- m463 3y ago
  As a parent, I would point out there are numerous health benefits from standing desks.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Also related: You don't convince someone to do something; you persuade him to do so. You convince people OF something. Liberal arts FTW.
  - function_seven 3y ago
    "I convinced Timmy to set off that stink bomb" is shorthand for "I convinced Timmy that it was a good idea to set off that stink bomb". It works okay.
    - dismalpedigree 3y ago
      [flagged]
- bachmeier 3y ago
  Stack Overflow mods would have closed this submission as a duplicate.
TheAtomic 3y ago
I went to a graduation a few years ago at Carnegie Mellon. Some hedge fund guy was making his biggest donation yet and gave the commencement speech. It was endlessly about him and the new building to be named after him and how he was about to own an NFL football team. There was a Nobel Prize winner seated next to him on stage. I don't think she got to say anything, but was recognized for her work in cancer research. The juxtaposition felt Kafkaesque and a bit sleazy.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  to be fair, if she had finished the job and cured cancer, she could buy a Premier League team* (*cuz academics == soccer) There is a natural tendency to diminish money as a measure of anything good, but money really is the yardstick by which we jointly measure all things, trading off time with kids, family, travel, leisure against other priorities, and being rewarded by the rest of society for our contributions to what they want to spend money on, their tradeoffs. Turns out that there are a bunch of very skilled highly educated people who want to spend their time researching cancer (which cure they could sell for a lot of money), compared to those who are most capable of and interested in, financially restructuring companies. That hedge fund guy's donation to CMU is tax-deductible; we do that because everybody loves a philanthropist giving. His tax bracket is let's say 50%, so, where he would have owed $50 million to the government on that $100 million income, by giving it to CMU, they get the full $100 million and the guy owes no tax; of course leaving it to the rest of the tax payers to cover that $50 million in the state and federal budgets... but that's a good deal because a private elite university got more money? (And if hedgie donated appreciated securities rather than income, the bracketed tax savings get amplified that much more...) There are plenty of places where "the market" chooses the wrong winners (by some important measures) but most of the complaints about the market don't go in that direction. Talk about how important money is, instead of socially devaluing it, then it would be easier to focus people's attention on cartel and monopoly pricing, negative externalities, etc.
  - audibahnbacks 3y ago
    “His tax bracket is say 50%” Even for HN this level of delusion is rare.
AlbertCory 3y ago
I told the university CS department that I wanted to endow a chair there. Not a professorship -- an actual chair, that you can sit in. They'd heard that joke before, unfortunately. I think they're missing a financial opportunity here :)
- ThrowawayR2 3y ago
  Perhaps they could have persuaded if you'd pointed out that support for the fundaments of researchers is just as sorely needed as support for research of fundamentals, dohohoho.
  - smcin 3y ago
    Is that the race to the bottom?
- chihuahua 3y ago
  Did they refuse to take your money? That seems unusual. They could have taken your money, and written your name on the underside of the chair with a Sharpie pen.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    It didn't get to that stage, unfortunately.
- theoldlove 3y ago
  Faculty chairs do come with physical chairs. The ones I’ve seen are nice, wooden chairs with a little metal plaque with the title and the holder of the chair. I suspect new chairs are purchased for each new holder of the title, and you get to permanently keep yours.
- m463 3y ago
  I've noticed lots of universities and parks have mr-and-mrs-financial-benefactor benches on their grounds...
PaulHoule 3y ago
In Phillips Hall (Electrical and Computer Engineering) at Cornell there is an actual chair with an endowment plaque on it in a hallway.
ggm 3y ago
My family endowed a (small) prize in memory of our academic parents. Universities overwhelmingly prefer untied donations, but some significant "God, not on sports, please" incidents have led to suspicion of how they think donors feel about the spending. (The prize is to the most deserving student irrespective of academic status, across arts/architecture and computer science and from feedback has been a godsend to some cash strapped mature students at times. I'm happy)
- flybrand 3y ago
  My grandparents gave an award for pulp and paper science that is still given out. It’s tiny now, but a full ride for the student. At one point they - the school - were very appreciative, but their enthusiasm has dwindled quite a bit.
  - ggm 3y ago
    There's a point in the life of any endowment below the gigantic where it's rate of "return" (judged in the wide, not just financially) feels to drop below the hassle of maintaining it. I think some economies have laws against "in perpetuity" finances. Anthony Trollope based "the warden" around the consequences of a bequest in medaevil times carried into Victorian English Anglican church politics. If the student(s) still value it, I think it's doing its job. Good on your grandparents!
    - dmoy 3y ago
      > some economies have laws against "in perpetuity" finances. Indeed, but it's a bit different. A will or trust is limited to some period - say 21 years after the latest beneficiary. But there's a difference between a trust with very specific rules, and a general endowment. Doesn't seem to work out the same way. Also, there's a lot of variance in state law. (Side note, did you know that SPY is a trust that will dissolve after certain people die? In the early days of ETFs they didn't... bother figuring out the right legal structure, so they just used a unit investment trust, tied to a dozen or so specific people. So maybe have an exit plan for SPY by like.. 2090-ish, I forget)
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
This doesn't explain what "endowing a chair" means. How does this plump a donor's rep and ego? Meanwhile, the entire college ecosystem is disgusting. I went to a top private university and will never give them a penny, for the way they treated both students and non-professor faculty.
- defrost 3y ago
  The Reverend Henry Lucas (c. 1610 – July 1663) was an English clergyman and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1648. A full 360 years later we're still rather in awe of the chair he endowed. Since its establishment, the professorship has been held by, among others, Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, George Stokes, Joseph Larmor, Paul Dirac, and Stephen Hawking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucasian_Professor_of_Mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucasian_Professor_of_Mathemat...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
adammarples 3y ago
After reading this I'm still not sure what "endowing a chair" means, which is a shame because it was otherwise we'll written.
jimnotgym 3y ago
> as when someone donates large sums to endow professorships in niche topics Linking to > When Strings Are Attached, Quirky Gifts Can Limit Universities Going on to say that Princeton is being forced to run lots of greek courses due to dead guy paying for it. Well...duh...of course. Wasn't that the point of the donation? The donor obviously wanted to imagine Greek studies going on forever. I presume after some period they could stop? Give the money away, or repurpose it. For me this is an arguement against the whole concept of wealthy benefactors vs taxation. If you tax the money the government can spend it on the public good. If you let the rich guy keep it they will spend it on their own whims.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  But also, If you tax the money the government will spend it on their own whims. If you let the rich guy keep it they can spend it on the public good.
  - TrinaryWorksToo 3y ago
    At least we have some control via elections and petitioning the government
- taskforcegemini 3y ago
  but either can be good or bad, so choosing one over the other isn't better by default
  - jimnotgym 3y ago
    No, but the default opinion seems to be that rich will spend it well and the government will waste it. This is plainly absurd. At least the people have a degree of democratic control over the government.

64 points by jseliger 3y ago

dang 3y ago

Related: Ask HN: How to convince my parents to buy me a good chair? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=585571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=585571 - April 2009 (7 comments) (I'm joking)

chihuahua 3y ago
During the early days of Covid, Microsoft bought me an Aeron chair with all the bells and whistles. It didn't even take any convincing. They just said "here's $$$$ kid, go buy yourself some office equipment"
m463 3y ago
As a parent, I would point out there are numerous health benefits from standing desks.
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
Also related: You don't convince someone to do something; you persuade him to do so. You convince people OF something. Liberal arts FTW.
- function_seven 3y ago
  "I convinced Timmy to set off that stink bomb" is shorthand for "I convinced Timmy that it was a good idea to set off that stink bomb". It works okay.
  - dismalpedigree 3y ago
    [flagged]
bachmeier 3y ago
Stack Overflow mods would have closed this submission as a duplicate.

TheAtomic 3y ago

I went to a graduation a few years ago at Carnegie Mellon. Some hedge fund guy was making his biggest donation yet and gave the commencement speech. It was endlessly about him and the new building to be named after him and how he was about to own an NFL football team. There was a Nobel Prize winner seated next to him on stage. I don't think she got to say anything, but was recognized for her work in cancer research. The juxtaposition felt Kafkaesque and a bit sleazy.

fsckboy 3y ago
to be fair, if she had finished the job and cured cancer, she could buy a Premier League team* (*cuz academics == soccer) There is a natural tendency to diminish money as a measure of anything good, but money really is the yardstick by which we jointly measure all things, trading off time with kids, family, travel, leisure against other priorities, and being rewarded by the rest of society for our contributions to what they want to spend money on, their tradeoffs. Turns out that there are a bunch of very skilled highly educated people who want to spend their time researching cancer (which cure they could sell for a lot of money), compared to those who are most capable of and interested in, financially restructuring companies. That hedge fund guy's donation to CMU is tax-deductible; we do that because everybody loves a philanthropist giving. His tax bracket is let's say 50%, so, where he would have owed $50 million to the government on that $100 million income, by giving it to CMU, they get the full $100 million and the guy owes no tax; of course leaving it to the rest of the tax payers to cover that $50 million in the state and federal budgets... but that's a good deal because a private elite university got more money? (And if hedgie donated appreciated securities rather than income, the bracketed tax savings get amplified that much more...) There are plenty of places where "the market" chooses the wrong winners (by some important measures) but most of the complaints about the market don't go in that direction. Talk about how important money is, instead of socially devaluing it, then it would be easier to focus people's attention on cartel and monopoly pricing, negative externalities, etc.
- audibahnbacks 3y ago
  “His tax bracket is say 50%” Even for HN this level of delusion is rare.

AlbertCory 3y ago

I told the university CS department that I wanted to endow a chair there. Not a professorship -- an actual chair, that you can sit in. They'd heard that joke before, unfortunately. I think they're missing a financial opportunity here :)

ThrowawayR2 3y ago
Perhaps they could have persuaded if you'd pointed out that support for the fundaments of researchers is just as sorely needed as support for research of fundamentals, dohohoho.
- smcin 3y ago
  Is that the race to the bottom?
chihuahua 3y ago
Did they refuse to take your money? That seems unusual. They could have taken your money, and written your name on the underside of the chair with a Sharpie pen.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  It didn't get to that stage, unfortunately.
theoldlove 3y ago
Faculty chairs do come with physical chairs. The ones I’ve seen are nice, wooden chairs with a little metal plaque with the title and the holder of the chair. I suspect new chairs are purchased for each new holder of the title, and you get to permanently keep yours.
m463 3y ago
I've noticed lots of universities and parks have mr-and-mrs-financial-benefactor benches on their grounds...

PaulHoule 3y ago

In Phillips Hall (Electrical and Computer Engineering) at Cornell there is an actual chair with an endowment plaque on it in a hallway.

ggm 3y ago

My family endowed a (small) prize in memory of our academic parents. Universities overwhelmingly prefer untied donations, but some significant "God, not on sports, please" incidents have led to suspicion of how they think donors feel about the spending. (The prize is to the most deserving student irrespective of academic status, across arts/architecture and computer science and from feedback has been a godsend to some cash strapped mature students at times. I'm happy)

flybrand 3y ago
My grandparents gave an award for pulp and paper science that is still given out. It’s tiny now, but a full ride for the student. At one point they - the school - were very appreciative, but their enthusiasm has dwindled quite a bit.
- ggm 3y ago
  There's a point in the life of any endowment below the gigantic where it's rate of "return" (judged in the wide, not just financially) feels to drop below the hassle of maintaining it. I think some economies have laws against "in perpetuity" finances. Anthony Trollope based "the warden" around the consequences of a bequest in medaevil times carried into Victorian English Anglican church politics. If the student(s) still value it, I think it's doing its job. Good on your grandparents!
  - dmoy 3y ago
    > some economies have laws against "in perpetuity" finances. Indeed, but it's a bit different. A will or trust is limited to some period - say 21 years after the latest beneficiary. But there's a difference between a trust with very specific rules, and a general endowment. Doesn't seem to work out the same way. Also, there's a lot of variance in state law. (Side note, did you know that SPY is a trust that will dissolve after certain people die? In the early days of ETFs they didn't... bother figuring out the right legal structure, so they just used a unit investment trust, tied to a dozen or so specific people. So maybe have an exit plan for SPY by like.. 2090-ish, I forget)

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

This doesn't explain what "endowing a chair" means. How does this plump a donor's rep and ego? Meanwhile, the entire college ecosystem is disgusting. I went to a top private university and will never give them a penny, for the way they treated both students and non-professor faculty.

defrost 3y ago
The Reverend Henry Lucas (c. 1610 – July 1663) was an English clergyman and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1648. A full 360 years later we're still rather in awe of the chair he endowed. Since its establishment, the professorship has been held by, among others, Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, George Stokes, Joseph Larmor, Paul Dirac, and Stephen Hawking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucasian_Professor_of_Mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucasian_Professor_of_Mathemat...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

adammarples 3y ago

After reading this I'm still not sure what "endowing a chair" means, which is a shame because it was otherwise we'll written.

jimnotgym 3y ago

> as when someone donates large sums to endow professorships in niche topics Linking to > When Strings Are Attached, Quirky Gifts Can Limit Universities Going on to say that Princeton is being forced to run lots of greek courses due to dead guy paying for it. Well...duh...of course. Wasn't that the point of the donation? The donor obviously wanted to imagine Greek studies going on forever. I presume after some period they could stop? Give the money away, or repurpose it. For me this is an arguement against the whole concept of wealthy benefactors vs taxation. If you tax the money the government can spend it on the public good. If you let the rich guy keep it they will spend it on their own whims.

hgsgm 3y ago
But also, If you tax the money the government will spend it on their own whims. If you let the rich guy keep it they can spend it on the public good.
- TrinaryWorksToo 3y ago
  At least we have some control via elections and petitioning the government
taskforcegemini 3y ago
but either can be good or bad, so choosing one over the other isn't better by default
- jimnotgym 3y ago
  No, but the default opinion seems to be that rich will spend it well and the government will waste it. This is plainly absurd. At least the people have a degree of democratic control over the government.