The Insiders
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Jul
23
What can the endowment do for us? The Berea college example.
Posted by: Neal Yonson | July 23, 2008 | 6 Comments
UBC Student Senator Alfie Lee posted this New York Times article on facebook a few days ago. I think it’s worth thinking pretty hard about. Berea College, which outwardly looks like a typical New England private school, uses it’s 1.1 billion dollar endowment for students. From the Berea website:/
Berea continues to build upon a distinctive history of 150 years of learning, labor and service, and find new ways to apply our mission (the Great Commitments) to contemporary times by promoting kinship among all people, serving communities in Appalachia and beyond and living sustainably to conserve limited natural resources….
Berea continues to build upon a distinctive history of 150 years of learning, labor and service, and find new ways to apply our mission (the Great Commitments) to contemporary times by promoting kinship among all people, serving communities in Appalachia and beyond and living sustainably to conserve limited natural resources
Now true, this college is different from UBC in a lot of ways. It’s much smaller, not a research institution, has a bigger endowment (UBC’s is about 700 million) and only accepts low-income students. Students work 10 hours a week on campus and pay no tuition. Food comes from the on-campus farm, furniture in the workshops, and crafts are produced for sale. Still though, this school is an example of what it looks like to actually live up to the high aspirations of lofty mission statements (like UBC’s Trek 2010), and using an endowment fund for this purpose. UBC’s endowment fund definitely has potential benefits to students and research. But the debates about how much to use now, how much to save, and to what lengths to go to enrich the endowment (by leasing out our land for development, for instance) are hugely important.
Comments
6 Comments so far
FYI you can find info put out by UBC on its endowment here if you feel like comparing. I imagine that the actual value of the fund could be fairly different than what was reported in November 2007.
Yes, According to Darren its value is now in the 1.2-1.3 billion range. It has grown quite alot in the last year, so the summary on the treasury office’s site is out of date by alot of money.
i agree that there can be healthy benefits from endowments and also believe that they are too often the focus of conspiracy theorists at UBC. but….
it is worth noting- ubc is just not even in the same ballpark as a Berea. people- and here i include many members of the board of governors, seem to get really cavalier with their comparisons of ubc to ivy level schools in the states. fact is that the resources are nowhere near comparable.
to me- ‘endowment per student,’ as opposed to ‘total endowment,’ is a much more useful metric for framing the discusion. A few examples of ‘endowment per student’ (meaning, i think, principal available per student) and then a link:
$21,169 UBC
$37,636 Mt. Allison University
$1,900,000 Princeton
$666,667 Berea College
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_universities_by_endowment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._colleges_and_universities_by_endowment#Endowment_per_student
it’s not to say that we shouldn’t pursue endowment- but even if ubc ignored everyone and did the worst kind of development possible- exclusively built dense, $million+ condos everywhere on campus- you still wouldnt even be in the ballpark of a berea or a princeton.
so to me it’s a bit of a red herring for ubc to suggest (and i have heard this argument) that many of our choices- developing the farm for example, are worth the sacrifice to our existing student experience because they can help ubc get to a princeton or berea level of service to students. not all endowments are created equal, in other words.
Jeff Friedrich
Not to mention that the more money UBC generates from the endowment, the less money the Province is likely to transfer to UBC. It’s not as if it’s “extra money”. I’ll get back to you once I check out the numbers, but I bet if you take a look, you’ll see real dollars from the endowment increasing as real dollars from the Province decrease.
Blake, you’re probably right about that but remember cum hoc ergo propter hoc. The university does not include endowment funds in operating revenues and the government doesn’t view it as money that could go into operations either. But because of the efforts of the university to enrich the endowment, you are likely to see a correlation.
I suspect that if there were a relationship between an endowment and less money from the province, it would exist more in relation to public outcry about the endowment, or would simply exist independently of the endowment’s actual size and more on a political impression of its size.
Well, often times, the President will compare the Church and the University as two very old, long-lasting institutions of the western society. But if you think a bit harder, it took the Church a couple of centuries to figure out that the Church is actually for spiritual awakening, and not for making extravagant ceremonies or wealth. So is the university also having to take another long period of time to realize the painful fact that the university is about teaching and learning and knowledge seeking, and not for building up huge wealth for endowment project and pursuing the iffy “ivy league” status?