NB: (1) Universities have lawyers who can negotiate with donors to re-allocate money within the agreements (the table alone of "Largest NIH grant recipients ~ $ 6.6 B in total) -> some money can be reallocated legally; (2) the variance in overhead %ages among universities (and the positive correlation between endowment size and endowment RoR) also suggest scope for reallocation; (3) University administration costs have grown as a share of total costs, suggesting scope for economies in administration costs [the regime has fired many good people who could easily do university admin jobs at lower]; (4) schools have reserves that can be used for emergency purposes.
Very good explanation of the reality of university endowments. I'm a retired academic (>35 years) and associate dean of a business school (>20 years) in a private, medium-sized university in New England. I'd like to add that universities use investment firms to manage their endowments and, tend to be conservative because they are somewhat risk-adverse - understandingly so. While the funds grow, they don't grow astronomically. As associate dean I became very familiar with our endowed funds and, as you stated, most of them were restricted as to how the funds could be used. We had some scholarships that could only be awarded to students from particular small towns, or in a particular major, or of a particular religion, and, many years, we had no one who qualified. To get this changed our Development Office would have to begin a long process of finding the donors, or their families or estates, and convincing them to change the terms of their gift. Many donors like to micromanage their gifts and this causes problems. And, awarding a scholarship from an endowed fund could easily reduce funding the student was receiving from another source. Very few endowed funds can be used to replace operational funds and many universities have had internal budget cuts for the last 5 - 10 years, so there aren't other funds available to spend. Unlike the Ivy's or other large universities, the majority of universities have seen enrollment declines that are not going to be reversed in the near future. Unfortunately, Musk is not anywhere as smart as he thinks he is. He operates on hubris and arrogance, not knowledge and certainly not humility. He needs to be stopped.
NB: (1) Universities have lawyers who can negotiate with donors to re-allocate money within the agreements (the table alone of "Largest NIH grant recipients ~ $ 6.6 B in total) -> some money can be reallocated legally; (2) the variance in overhead %ages among universities (and the positive correlation between endowment size and endowment RoR) also suggest scope for reallocation; (3) University administration costs have grown as a share of total costs, suggesting scope for economies in administration costs [the regime has fired many good people who could easily do university admin jobs at lower]; (4) schools have reserves that can be used for emergency purposes.
Yes - there is a whole legal negotiated set of processes that are being ignored here
Very good explanation of the reality of university endowments. I'm a retired academic (>35 years) and associate dean of a business school (>20 years) in a private, medium-sized university in New England. I'd like to add that universities use investment firms to manage their endowments and, tend to be conservative because they are somewhat risk-adverse - understandingly so. While the funds grow, they don't grow astronomically. As associate dean I became very familiar with our endowed funds and, as you stated, most of them were restricted as to how the funds could be used. We had some scholarships that could only be awarded to students from particular small towns, or in a particular major, or of a particular religion, and, many years, we had no one who qualified. To get this changed our Development Office would have to begin a long process of finding the donors, or their families or estates, and convincing them to change the terms of their gift. Many donors like to micromanage their gifts and this causes problems. And, awarding a scholarship from an endowed fund could easily reduce funding the student was receiving from another source. Very few endowed funds can be used to replace operational funds and many universities have had internal budget cuts for the last 5 - 10 years, so there aren't other funds available to spend. Unlike the Ivy's or other large universities, the majority of universities have seen enrollment declines that are not going to be reversed in the near future. Unfortunately, Musk is not anywhere as smart as he thinks he is. He operates on hubris and arrogance, not knowledge and certainly not humility. He needs to be stopped.