Comment by Spivak
2 days ago
UPenn is a land-grant institution, they are not "just a business" they were given land and money specifically to serve the public good. They're why we have engineering degrees, the government specifically wanted institutions that taught practical marketable skills and to do research in those fields.
> UPenn is a land-grant institution
The University of Pennsylvania is one of the nine colonial colleges founded before the United States existed. It predates land grant institutions by over a century. I think you are confusing it with Pennsylvania State University, which is a land grant institution.
Wow an actual topic on HN that I know about. I spent 3.5 years studying the history of UPenn - including writing my thesis in its history - and it is definitely not a land grant university.
> UPenn is a land-grant institution
It isn't.
Despite the name, it's actually a private university.
Penn State is Pennsylvania's land grant university.
> They were given land and money specifically to serve the public good.
Their duty is to deliver education. It's not solving political problems meant for elected officials (and the population at large).
If 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?
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.
1 reply →
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...
2 replies →
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 they are like most other schools with a low income neighborhood nearby, they probably offer an entire k-12 education sequence for these kids ran under their education major’s department. Likewise their hospital probably treats low income people in the community. And of course the school itself is a massive jobs program for low income people in the area as well, who might qualify for reduced or no cost tuition for themselves or their kids.