Different budgets can go to different things. Grants for X can't be spent on Y. An endowment may be for a specific goal and likewise can't be spent on some ot

Different budgets can go to different things. Grants for X can't be spent on Y. An endowment may be for a specific goal and likewise can't be spent on some other things. Stanford is a research institution - and some money that it receives will be going to research rather than trying to reduce enrollment costs. Alternatively, "hey, they spent $22M on that project... maybe we should shut down the Stanford Liner Accelerator ( https://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/lcls/budget.html https://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/lcls/budget.html ) which had a project cost of $315M." There are many good institutions of higher learning out there that do not have research as part of their goal. There are 116 different community colleges within California that do not have research as part of their program and the California State University system (as opposed to University of California system) deemphasizes research. Stanford itself is a private school and not part of either of those systems. On the other hand, people who go to Stanford often want to study under and participate in the research that is being done in a given field - and that implies that research is being done (and money is being spent on it). As for the School of Sustainability - https://sustainability.stanford.edu/giving/research https://sustainability.stanford.edu/giving/research