alt Hacker NewsIf their duty is to deliver education, why are they sitting on a $20B hoard?
Presumably they could spend a little bit of that to deliver some more education, couldn’t they?
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In the short term, yes. Just like an orchard owner can chop down his trees and sell firewood to make a little more money this year.
Endowments are not just slush funds that can be used at leadership’s discretion; they are often from donated monies with specific stipulations set by donors on how, where, and what those funds can and cannot be spent on.
They spend $9 billion annually on exactly that. This "hoard" can, checks notes, fund barely two years of operations.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/231...
there are many, many people who are paid a lot of money to pretend to believe that the universities should actually be spending less and keeping more for their endowments because that strategy would enable the biggest impact at some indeterminate point in the future
> If their duty is to deliver education, why are they sitting on a $20B hoard?
Rich alumni, patents, etc. Also, it is a warchest for innovation and expansion. Same thing as other businesses, you have a surplus of cash for reinvestment.