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A related anecdote: my alma mater, the College of William & Mary, was founded in 1693 (second only to Harvard, which was founded in 1636). As you'll generally
by jmduke 13y ago
A related anecdote: my alma mater, the College of William & Mary, was founded in 1693 (second only to Harvard, which was founded in 1636). As you'll generally find, the biggest indicator of endowment size is year of establishment: older schools, in the aggregate, have more alumni, more cachet, more everything.
W&M is a huge exception: despite our age, our endowment per student is only around $80.5K (compare this to Stanford's $342K or UVa's $239K).
Why is it so low? Because we took the side of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. We spent our entire endowment on confederate war bonds and the majority of the student body (being in Virginia) went to fight for the South. They converted the Wren Building -- the oldest academic building still in use in the U.S. -- to a barracks.
After the Civil War ended, Virginia was broke -- and W&M was even more so. They kept the college closed for eight more years until they had enough money simply to operate.
- rayiner 13y agoStanford is over $1m/student, and Harvard is at $1.5m/student. Yale is at $1.7m/student.
- jmduke 13y agoWow, my numbers were way off. That emphasizes my point even further.
- larrys 13y ago"older schools, in the aggregate, have more alumni," What would effectively be the difference in alumni between a college founded in 1693 and 1890 or even 1930 by that thinking?
- EvanKelly 13y agoA school founded in 1693 has a 200 year head start on alumni donations on the school founded in 1890. Living alumni are not the only ones whose money is in the endowment. I'm not sure how recent the phenomnenon is, but many people bequeath much of their wealth to their university when they pass. 200 years of alumni, and in the case of many of the named schools, especially wealthy alumni can have a dramatic effect.
- SatvikBeri 13y agoCompound interest. Many schools invest part of their endowment and use part for expenses. So older schools have a literally exponential advantage.
- parenthesis 13y ago>>> my alma mater, the College of William & Mary, was founded in 1693 (second only to Harvard, which was founded in 1636) Bah! ;-) My alma mater, the University of Edinburgh, was founded in 1583, yet is still young compared to Oxford and Cambridge. However, even the oldest or 'best' universities in the UK have tiny endowments compared to their US counterparts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UK_universities_by_endowment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UK_universities_by_endo...
- scott_s 13y agoI was a grad student in CS there from 2003 - 2006. During faculty interviews, there was always a meet-and-greet with the grad students. During one of those, we realized that the candidate didn't know W&M is a public school. Most people outside of Virginia don't realize that, either. If you graduated this year, then you're way too young to have been in any of the classes I TAed. That's startling for me to realize.
- jmduke 13y agoSaw your master's thesis -- if its any consolation, Kearns is still here, teaching Databases in flip flops.