Too well endowed?

• Author: Cottle, Michelle
• Position: Top colleges concerned with their endowments - Includes related article on college fundraising

Are top universities more concerned about money than about educating students?

Often, it is the confluence of several news events that brings the real story into focus. Take the Feb. 18 press release on the results of the National Association of University and College Business Officers' annual survey of school endowments: "Golden Era in University and College Endowments," the organization trumpeted. "Institutions Hold More Than $150 Billion" The strong economy, it seems, has been very good to our institutions of higher learning. University endowments--the pool of donated money, land, artwork, etc., that schools invest in stocks, bonds, and real estate--have benefited from the long-lived bull market along with everyone else's investments. The Ivy League has done particularly well: As of mid-1997, Princeton's endowment had swelled to $5 billion; Yale had $5.7 billion, while Harvard led the pack with $11 billion. (Needless to say, those figures have since risen considerably--even with the recent dip in the Dow.)

In and of themselves, the survey findings are noteworthy but likely to dissolve quickly into the pool of articles about how market madness is changing America. The story becomes more interesting, however, when viewed in conjunction with an April report from the Carnegie Foundation showing that Americas top universities "have too often failed, and continue to fail, their undergraduate populations" The report notes that this nation's 125 research universities (those that offer a range of baccalaureate and graduate degrees and receive several million a year in federal funding for research) are focusing on high-level research work at the expense of students. The commission-comprising university officials, as well as members of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Council on Education--charges:

[University] recruitment materials display proudly

the world-famous professors, the splendid facilities,

and the ground-breaking research that goes on

within them, but thousands of students graduate

without ever seeing the world-famous professors or

tasting genuine research. Some of their instructors

are likely to be badly trained or even untrained

teaching assistants who are groping their way

toward a teaching technique; some others may be

tenured drones who deliver set lectures from yellowed

notes, making no effort to engage the bored

minds of the students in front of them.

Many students graduate having accumulated

whatever number of courses is required, but still

lacking a coherent body of knowledge or any

inkling as to how one sort of information might

relate to others. And all too often they graduate

without knowing how to think logically, write

clearly, or speak coherently.

We're not talking about Podunk U. here. The schools examined by the commission include the cream of our education establishment: Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Duke, Rice--in short, some of the most respected (and most expensive) institutions around. Adding insult to injury, the report reminds us that undergraduate tuition is "one of the major sources of university income, helping to support research programs and graduate education?' In other words, undergrads and their parents are subsidizing the programs that divert university attention and resources away from said undergrads.

Now add to this mix a series of recent headlines from various papers: "Harvard will raise tuition 3.5%; cost per year in fall tops $31,000"; "Brown to raise student costs to $31,060"; "Dartmouth hikes tuition 4 percent"; and so on. Providing a broader view of the situation, a January report by the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education notes that, between 1987 and 1996, the average tuition price jumped 132 percent for public, four-year colleges and universities and 99 percent for private ones. Tuition increases have dramatically outpaced not only inflation, but also universities' costs to educate students.

Taken all together, these stories paint a disquieting picture of what's happening in the realm of higher education: Our top schools are richer than ever, but tuition costs continue to rise at more than twice the rate of inflation. And, in stark contrast to the old you get what you pay for" adage, the quality of undergraduate education is in decline. Clearly, there has been a breakdown in the system--a breakdown caused not by financial troubles, but by the misplaced priorities of universities, students, alumni, and society in general.

Brother, can you spare a million?

If you went to college, chances are at some point since graduating you've gotten one of those phone calls: "Hello, Ms. X? My name is Mr. Y. I'm calling on behalf of University Z's reunions [i.e., fund-raising] campaign to see if you'd be willing to pledge a gift of $50 or more to help your class reach its stated goal of $1 million" If you're one of your alma mater's more financially successful alumni, you may even have received a personal visit from the school's development (i.e...