Hi Dan, you forgot to mention that havard University still applied for Covid relief funds even though they gave 50billion USD in endowment. They received 10s of millions of dollars in relief funds.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that an actual, real-life place is legitimately called "Hoboken", and it's not just an intentionally stupid name someone came up with to put in the Mafia videogame.
@@MaxwellTornado mf i live there and you bet your ass its a real place. not even the goofiest town name in new jersey. we have Mahwah, Ho-Ho-Kus (the hyphens are in the name), Brick, Ogdensburg, and Moonachie. there are 65,000 people living in hoboken and it rules
Another important fact is that non of these universities pay property taxes because they are "nonprofits". Yale owns 54% of the land in New Haven. In 2019 they had a $40 billion endowment while the New Haven Public School system was over $20 million in debt. The property taxes Yale would have owed the city would have covered this.
Additionally this idea of a raining day fund needed for something like covid is really just bullshit. During covid Yale fired almost all of their non union and non faculty staff like kitchen workers and janitors. While obviously they would be doing less work during covid they are a $40 billion nonprofit
A few years ago the dean of Princeton was interviewed on a podcast, and the host asked him since their endowment was so massive would he ever recommend to a donor to give the money to a smaller institution because the money would make a bigger difference there. He said no because he couldn't guarantee the money would be spent well. Princetons endowment currently sits at 34.1 billion. Mf you aren't spending that money well. These ghouls will never willingly give a thin cent to anyone but themselves.
"well spent" means invested. Remember, they're finance ghouls. They see the purpose of an endowment as growing exponentially to be as large as possible, not to actually facilitate the running of the school.
Sooo.... students have to pay a lot for colleges while colleges get a lot of money they don't spend on education. Does this mean that colleges now are in business of collecting money instead of education?
Tell me you know nothing about economy without telling you know nothing about economy. Any cost can rise if, say, the gas price is risen, and not all businesses control gas prices
@@ivandankob7112yah know, generally i am against this medication being used for shallow cosmetic reasons, but i think ozempic might be good for you as deep throating that many capitalistic boots can't be good for your health. you're not looking at the big picture, you need to zoom out more.
@@ivandankob7112They could pay to run the university for decades without taking in any tuition. Therefore, they could keep tuition the same and take a cut in their income while providing the same services.
They'll argue that their costs are increasing in order to remain competitive with rival schools.. an arms race of excessive spending and exclusivity bullshit. It's insane how much good all that endowment money could be doing in the world, but no, that's the purpose it's serving. I will NEVER donate to a college, they take more than enough from their students and their families.
Yea it’s insane how the nation has just accepted the racketeering of college tuition. At this point, criticizing tuition hikes is about as effective as criticizing congress for their self pay increases. It’s disgusting
Hi Dan, you forgot to mention that havard University still applied for Covid relief funds even though they gave 50billion USD in endowment. They received 10s of millions of dollars in relief funds.
"Why would we put a small percentage of our massive endowments towards free tuition when we literally have people lining up and competing to pay us? We're a nonprofit, not a charity." - Universities, probably
Lol, college franchising already exists, many of them are operational in China, Middle East, and Southeast Asia. So, nope it is not novelty, for quite some time now.😅
These days I wouldn't even consider Harvard to be just a university. I would think of it as a massive business conglomerate, with their hands in the banking, insurance, medical, and publishing fields.
@@gregtomamichel973Money itself “works”. So those who profit off of the management from the endowment have an incentive to find ways to maximize it’s value.
As a person that grew up around Berea College and has a Mom that currently works there, it’s great to see them represented as a college that puts their funding towards the students instead of saving it for massive projects.
Having worked at an endowment, I can say these really are important questions that not enough people are asking (especially with regards to the biggest endowments)
A lot of people are asking them but you won't see those people working at endowment departments because... the endowment departments don't want to hire people who desire change to the infinite money machine.
Thank you for covering uni board of trustees and how these are increasingly being run by private equity types. A topic that deserves way more attention (uni boards set tuition and determine operating budgets).
Right. I wish the university students who attend these institutions would speak up about this more considering they and their peers are in the direct line of fire.
yeah i went to a community college and right before i started they told us that textbooks were free forever. if they can do that, far more elite schools can, too.
that's the hopeful, loving part of your humanity speaking. your cynical side knows that makes perfect sense, because why would those greedy, chalk-handed pigs feel a need to do anything that actually helps people?
It's only strange if you assume their reason for being is to educate people instead of provide a cushy, elitist place for a bunch of faculty and alumni to hang around.
I'm a scientific researcher and PhD student in the fields of electrochemistry, molecular physics, materials science, and chemical engineering. My fields aren't nearly as expensive to work in as the likes of biological and medical sciences, but I still think it's deeply sad how these endowments could go to internally funding nearly all of a university's research without the need for external grants, paying off all tuition for students, run nearly all of the necessary facilities on campus grounds, pay all of the workers a living and thriving wage, and then still have plenty left over, for decades if not centuries. Finances are a perpetual stress for everyone, and universities do nothing but hoard without purpose. It's both infuriating and disheartening.
The endowments are huge, but they are not that huge. These larger universities likely have yearly budgets in the high 100's of millions or billions. If they put the whole worth of the funds towards paying those costs they would run out of money within a decade or two. The profits of these funds can go a long way towards reducing or eliminating tuition, but they are far from actually being able to pay for the operating costs of these universities.
@@evancombs5159 depends on the school. At smaller institutions like liberal arts colleges and tier 3-5 universities, you are absolutely correct. But at tier 1 and tier 2 universities, both public and private, they have enormous incomes from companies, real estate, contracts, alumni donations, and a whole host of other sources of cash flow. Take Johns Hopkins for example. JHU is quite literally the landlord of the NIH, a huge contract hub for the DoD and DoE via the APL, and have academics who sit on advisory boards for a number of companies in medical devices, energy, and construction. Now, their administrators are also paid exorbitantly while their staff are paid between minimum wage to a livable but not thrivable wage. Tuition is an enormous profit for the university, on top of the overhead from grants that the professors write and win-- overhead ranges from 40% to 65%, depending on the department. Beyond cutting tuition, the university is able to cut significant costs of operation. I will agree with you that it will not be able to pay the costs in full on endowment alone, but I would expect a lion's share to be covered at least.
To add some perspective, the combined amount of endowment money of all US universities is 839 billion dollars (i.e., $839,000,000,000). The total number of college-aged Americans is about 22 million (taking a 4-year age bracket). If you divide the endowment by the people of college age, each one could get a lump sum of $38,000. That would be enough to pay tuition for a year or two, but no more than that. If only half of those 22 million attend college, you can give them 76,000 dollars each, which may cover 3-4 years of tuition at an average school, but then the money is gone. So, it's a ton of money, but not enough to give freebies to everyone.
It is wild to think that the US News Rankings might literally result in billions of dollars in economic activity in trying to game those rankings to universities advantages.
Good Work always makes you feel a mix of feeling amused and incredibly pissed off at the same time. Thanks for talking about this topic which is criminally under reported
i like that the channel is aware enough to have a person other than dan back up the actual facts because you have a very clear jokey-serious distinction
shoutout to the guy in 5:29 doing peace sign to the camera. Was wondering how people react like everything is normal when our baige coat guy is out in the street.
Also, you don’t HAVE to go to Harvard, Yale, etc. there are plenty of great schools that don’t cause you to go into insane levels of debt. You go so that you can tell people that you went.
*Yes, yes, you do.* If you're rich and your kid is not the best student, has modest intelligence, or just wants to be lazy then they absolutely need the networking opportunities. No price is too high to make sure they are hobnobbing with the right (rich) people. It's a ticket to staying rich and, if you are savvy enough, the elite, upper class.
"Elite" universities are about rubberstamping the next generation of elites. That's why they have "legacy admissions." One would have to be very foolish to believe that Harvard teaches better science or engineering than Berkeley.@@x--.
@@user-bq2ek1xf7iWhy imagine? The U.S learned that lesson. When those poors graduate the good colleges without massive debt. Then they do radical stuff like effectively enact changes in the status quo that benefit the other filthy poors. The rich decided that radical actions from educates poors cannot happeb again. Hence schools harvest vast piles of money for the sake of stability in the economic hierarchy.
College tuition is getting way too expensive for middle class to afford even with financial aid program. In 1992 College Tuition = BMW 325I , Now = BMW M5 ( Cost per year )
I had no idea the private college greed was THIS BAD overseas. In my country they are also little "non-profit" ghouls with no soul, but HOT DANG NOT IN THE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. that is scary.
Financial Aid Administrator at a large university here - it's important to note that Berea College is a work college, which is a sector of the Federal Work-Study program. So while they do not charge their students any tuition, each student is required to work a job on campus to pay for their education
Great point! Why don’t you recommend to the board at your large university that every student have the option to free tuition covered by the massive endowment so long as they work a job on campus for it! I’m sure they will be thrilled and accommodating to the suggestion
BREAKING: We are bringing our journalistic talents to the New York Comedy Festival on November 8th for a special business conference. Tickets can are available for purchase and flexxing on your coworkers 👇
I understand that it would be very legally bad to spend a rich person's money on something other than what they said, but also they have the choice of taking the money or not. In my college, i used to work with the student government and lived in a house the college owned that had dips in the floor and a condemnable unclean basement. Yet we were asked to figure out where to put a million dollar statue on campus. AND only one dorm building on campus abided by ADA regulations and it was the one you had to pay extra to live in and had preference toward senior students.
Freakonomics did a great multi-part series about elite colleges and why they don't follow the typical supply and demand rules of markets. Basically, as he said, their value partly comes from their exclusiveness so deans are hesitant to start eroding that. There was one example of a school that opened new campuses abroad but they're an outlier.
Behind closed doors these schools plan out how to encourage more students to apply to them knowing they won't accept any of them, just to increase how "selective" they are
This topic is fascinating, and basically still mysterious. Like Brown's fund gets 50% annual return and when people ask htf they do that, they answer is "oh well we are very smart and just invested in things that have higher returns" .... WHAT???
Is Good Work hiring? Actual accountant and academic here - hell I'd even I'd donate some services. Fun, business-oriented, truly informative - Good Work is an actual force for good.
Another fun college endowment fact: the Harvard endowment bought a lot of questionably legal forest in Romania some decades ago, and is now selling it off to Ikea who logs the pristine old growth
colleges have basically become banks and investment funds. and administrative costs are so high because people join the board or some random titled position at the school and get a big payday for being friends with people in high places.
I have to take one exception with our WSJ reporter here. At 14:30 when she is talking about private equity financiers on college boards she states, “it’s not illegal, it’s not wrong for them to do it”. I would contend those are two different things. It may not be illegal, but it absolutely is wrong, and it should be illegal.
I keep hearing that the Ivies should just expand, but I don’t think that’s the solution. If the US population keeps growing while Harvard classes stay the same size, the prestige/signaling value of a Harvard degree only increases. Everybody involved (Harvard, the alumni, the students who made the cut) wants that. The Ivies don’t exist to educate the masses, they exist to pedigree the elite. We’re not going to change that.
Among these top-tier institutions, students from the top 1% in income distribution make up a larger share of enrollment than all of the bottom 50% combined. These endowments aren’t necessarily going towards bringing in more kids from modest means.
It's crazy to hear about these mega wealthy, ever expanding economical monster universities from the US. I'm from Argentina and the public university system is HUGE and pumps out professionals like they're M&Msand it's pretty much free. Besides having to pay for the materials to use in class (notebooks, fotocopys and the like) you can freely enter any career choice and try it out. I'm 25 and have tried 4 university careers until i found out the one i enjoy. I find it crazy that in the US you choose ONCE and you're stuck with that shit for life.
here in Indonesia most of the top universities are public universities, with these prestigious public universities having pumped out well-known professionals and public figures, including ministers and presidents. some of the state universities have now no longer been fully subsidized by the government so they have to find some creative ways to get money. this is usually achieved through a separate path for students to be accepted into the uni apart from the usual nation-wide tests (called "jalur mandiri"), international study programs (where students would be facilitated to study abroad in their last year), as well as grants and donations from the alumni and businesspeople. tuition fees have somewhat increased (not skyrocket though), but since public universities in Indonesia have long been based on the principles of "kerakyatan" (idk how to translate it but it's kinda like a sense of service to the people), even a small increase of tuition fee continues to receive pushback from student organizations and the general public, so I don't see any sharp increase possible anytime soon
@@jdcsiahaan Yeah, it's kinda the same in Argentina. Any sort of front against public education, being increasing tuition fees or closing up certain branches of the schools or modifying curriculums creates huge upheavels form the student body and what we call "centro de estudiante" which is essentially a political system in publich universities where we elect a gruop of students (normally associated to a larger, national party) to be our voices for the school year. It's really hard in Argentina for any type of privatization effort or substantial change in the way the public system works. I'm all for it btw, not complaining at all, i love my country and it's university system.
Everything is ran like a business and going to school is viewed as an “investment”, it’s really a bet. Spend X amount to make Z amount. Nowadays those two variables just don’t make sense but we still feel pressure from older generations that went to better colleges that weren’t so greedy. The systems changed but expectations stay the same. I have a better savings and less debt than the people around me that stayed in school because I found a career path that didn’t require a degree and paid just the same (becoming more and more real every day)
@@ElSagardangas oh wow our situation is strikingly similar. here in Indonesia, we have what's called the BEM - "badan eksekutif mahasiswa" (student executive body). BEMs exist on a national level (e.g. BEM SI - "All-Indonesia BEM"), university level (e.g. BEM UI - "University of Indonesi BEM", and faculty level (e.g. BEM FISIP UI - "UI Faculty of Social and Political Sciences BEM") much of what i call "campus politicians" are also connected to a political party through association with an extra-campus organization, such as, but not limited to, the GMNI - Gerakan Mahasiswa Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Students Association), long associated with the nationalist party PDI-P, and the KAMMI - Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Muslim Indonesia (Action Union of Indonesian Muslim Students), long associated with the Islamist party PKS of course these BEM folks do protests on national policies and legislations, the usual, but they also often do protests on campus policies, especially regarding tuition fees
Here's an idea: ban pointless, non-major colleges and bring back vocational training. Smaller fees, easier use of endowments and those programs have better long term financial outcomes for grads. We could literally reseed the middle class with all the money sitting around being hoarded.
Yup, business has spent decades coasting on the rather well trained boomer working class. They're getting ready for retirement and millenials were pushed to take programming coarse. Who is gonna fix all the stuff the boomers built?
Wow, I could've bought a coffee shop with one year's tuition and I would actually have a job four years later instead of a large, thick piece of paper that I literally haven't looked at once!
Agreed, that's one of the reasons why I didn't consider going to UT. My family didn't make a lot of money, and because of that, private universities ended up being a better deal. If I remember right, UT would have cost like $10k per year, but the financial aid offered from other private universities I got into knocked their tuition down to like $5k to $6k
My "elite liberal arts college" bragged about their huge endowment, but never explained why we should care and ignored student protests to divest in oil
Sat through a speech by the Chancellor of Housing at a state university. He was bragging about how much money they spent on a new building so far. Meanwhile, they refused to provide the janitors, the crowd he was talking to, with glass cleaner or floor cleaning chemicals. Just use hot water. I'm sorry but that isn't cleaning, that's rinsing.
The same with income as with race discrimination, giving aid to a few token individuals per year does not help, but it reinforces the problem. Tokens from excluded castes are weaponized by the ruling caste, they perpetuate the lie that anyone has the same opportunities "if they work hard enough". The truth is, you can get good education outside "prestigious" schools. Getting a degree from these is the modern (but literal) equivalent of buying a title of nobility. If you try or want to get a prestigious degree, you're actually encouraging the problem. Even if you do it without money from a disadvantage. Of course a prestigious degree *will* land you better jobs. 🙂Just like titles of nobility used to. If you play the game right you could even end up in one of those boards, yum. Or in Congress.
One thing i would like to know is if these restricted donations are taxed. I know for churches if you donate for a specific purpose (without the ability for the church to reallocate those funds) that donation is taxable.
My God you're funny! Your comedic timing; s impeccable and the little blurbs that pop up are rib crackingly funny. My two favorite things: the content. Always great break downs of the issue. Also the constant reporting in front of the dumpster. You are hilarious. OK, another favorite: your stick footage used in every video of you "listening intently and nodding" I wonder how many people contribute to these wonderful videos, or is it just you? This is one of my favorite channels!
The only inaccuracy in this journalistic masterpiece is saying anyone in Hoboken is worth swinging with.
Hi Dan, you forgot to mention that havard University still applied for Covid relief funds even though they gave 50billion USD in endowment. They received 10s of millions of dollars in relief funds.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that an actual, real-life place is legitimately called "Hoboken", and it's not just an intentionally stupid name someone came up with to put in the Mafia videogame.
@@MaxwellTornado mf i live there and you bet your ass its a real place. not even the goofiest town name in new jersey. we have Mahwah, Ho-Ho-Kus (the hyphens are in the name), Brick, Ogdensburg, and Moonachie. there are 65,000 people living in hoboken and it rules
@@odawgmurph Ogdensburg doesn't sound weird at all. Brick sounds cool. I wanna live in Brick.
@@MaxwellTornadobased
Is good work replacing the daily show? Some experts say yes. Others have credibility.
Having segments on the show would be interesting. Showcase some additional talent on the channel.
@@yurisich maybe but that feels like a different show altogether. then again, it's not up to us is it?
yea yea yeah, i think so.
...wait.
Daily show is and always has be re?arded. Stewart is a total tribe POS and the new guy isn’t too much better.
Another important fact is that non of these universities pay property taxes because they are "nonprofits". Yale owns 54% of the land in New Haven. In 2019 they had a $40 billion endowment while the New Haven Public School system was over $20 million in debt. The property taxes Yale would have owed the city would have covered this.
Additionally this idea of a raining day fund needed for something like covid is really just bullshit. During covid Yale fired almost all of their non union and non faculty staff like kitchen workers and janitors. While obviously they would be doing less work during covid they are a $40 billion nonprofit
Disloyalty detected. Units have been dispatched to your location.
same with U Penn
Columbia U is the largest private property owner in NYC
@@normalweridoI think it's the church
Columbia is second
A few years ago the dean of Princeton was interviewed on a podcast, and the host asked him since their endowment was so massive would he ever recommend to a donor to give the money to a smaller institution because the money would make a bigger difference there. He said no because he couldn't guarantee the money would be spent well. Princetons endowment currently sits at 34.1 billion. Mf you aren't spending that money well. These ghouls will never willingly give a thin cent to anyone but themselves.
Well said.
I want to know what the dean of Princeton actually fucking does all day.
"well spent" means invested. Remember, they're finance ghouls. They see the purpose of an endowment as growing exponentially to be as large as possible, not to actually facilitate the running of the school.
All right, all right, all right…
At Harvard, there are 1.45 administrators for every teacher.
There are 7,024 administrators, and 7,240 students.
Sooo.... students have to pay a lot for colleges while colleges get a lot of money they don't spend on education. Does this mean that colleges now are in business of collecting money instead of education?
art collages especially
Yes. That is precisely what kind of business is going on
no but colleges are
Always have been, but they’re “non-profit” it’s a massive scam
Shhh.... don't say the quiet part out loud! The wealthy don't like it when you point out systematic wealth inequality enablement.
“We stock pile cash in case tuition prices go up” my brother in Christ you are in charge of your own tuition pricing
Also they said for emergency’s but during COVID everyone was still paying them like regular lol
Tell me you know nothing about economy without telling you know nothing about economy.
Any cost can rise if, say, the gas price is risen, and not all businesses control gas prices
@@ivandankob7112yah know, generally i am against this medication being used for shallow cosmetic reasons, but i think ozempic might be good for you as deep throating that many capitalistic boots can't be good for your health. you're not looking at the big picture, you need to zoom out more.
@@ivandankob7112They could pay to run the university for decades without taking in any tuition. Therefore, they could keep tuition the same and take a cut in their income while providing the same services.
Not how it works
College tuition has surpassed inflation by over 20% for a long time lol. The idea they need these endowments to combat inflation is insane
They'll argue that their costs are increasing in order to remain competitive with rival schools.. an arms race of excessive spending and exclusivity bullshit. It's insane how much good all that endowment money could be doing in the world, but no, that's the purpose it's serving. I will NEVER donate to a college, they take more than enough from their students and their families.
Yea it’s insane how the nation has just accepted the racketeering of college tuition. At this point, criticizing tuition hikes is about as effective as criticizing congress for their self pay increases. It’s disgusting
Honest to God this is some of the best comedy-news I've seen in a while. Good work guys.
Couldn't agree more. And info is awesome. Dan is a genius
I agree, I need more of this
Right. "Comedy-news".
@@NormanCorebit Comedy is rooted in truth.
the cutss to him loking into the camera during the zoom intervies is already funnier than any netflix comedy special ever
Hi Dan, you forgot to mention that havard University still applied for Covid relief funds even though they gave 50billion USD in endowment. They received 10s of millions of dollars in relief funds.
It wasn't a rainy enough day.
Well Money talks, if i have a lot of it, for some reason, others want to give me more...more discounts etc..make my life easier
Non-profit...but we happen to be extremely rich.
"Why would we put a small percentage of our massive endowments towards free tuition when we literally have people lining up and competing to pay us? We're a nonprofit, not a charity."
- Universities, probably
I'm imagining colleges franchising like McDonald's where you can apply to open up your own local Harvard.
"You're not in the ripping-off-college-kids business, you're in the real estate business."
Lol, college franchising already exists, many of them are operational in China, Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
So, nope it is not novelty, for quite some time now.😅
Well i think pennstate has multiple campuses idk if they are franchise though
Why not Harvard online? It would be cheaper. Even better Harvard AI online,. AI can do all the work & sit your exams so you don’t have to attend.
These days I wouldn't even consider Harvard to be just a university. I would think of it as a massive business conglomerate, with their hands in the banking, insurance, medical, and publishing fields.
I'm glad you are tackling this topic, Universities especially the big ones are practically corporations with how they operate
Yes, and other corporations don't just stockpile money, they find effective other ways to put that money to work.
@@gregtomamichel973Money itself “works”. So those who profit off of the management from the endowment have an incentive to find ways to maximize it’s value.
Apple had to get threatened by a large activist investor into doing something with $200 billion they were sitting on.@@gregtomamichel973
@@gregtomamichel973 As someone who works in a university, don't you worry, it is working. Just not toward us
As a person that grew up around Berea College and has a Mom that currently works there, it’s great to see them represented as a college that puts their funding towards the students instead of saving it for massive projects.
This entire subject is such an Americanism my European head is spinning.
Great piece. University of Pennsylvania has an endowment of 21 billion and they still nickel and dime poor people. Deplorable.
Yep and erode more of Philadelphia's neighborhoods to buy up land and not pay property taxes on it
Having worked at an endowment, I can say these really are important questions that not enough people are asking (especially with regards to the biggest endowments)
A lot of people are asking them but you won't see those people working at endowment departments because... the endowment departments don't want to hire people who desire change to the infinite money machine.
Thank you for covering uni board of trustees and how these are increasingly being run by private equity types. A topic that deserves way more attention (uni boards set tuition and determine operating budgets).
Right. I wish the university students who attend these institutions would speak up about this more considering they and their peers are in the direct line of fire.
yeah i went to a community college and right before i started they told us that textbooks were free forever. if they can do that, far more elite schools can, too.
I worked for the company that does he accounting for the Harvard and MIT endowments. They invest in EVERYTHING and run in the billions.
Find it strange that universities won’t use endowments to reduce tuition
that's the hopeful, loving part of your humanity speaking. your cynical side knows that makes perfect sense, because why would those greedy, chalk-handed pigs feel a need to do anything that actually helps people?
It's only strange if you assume their reason for being is to educate people instead of provide a cushy, elitist place for a bunch of faculty and alumni to hang around.
I'm a scientific researcher and PhD student in the fields of electrochemistry, molecular physics, materials science, and chemical engineering. My fields aren't nearly as expensive to work in as the likes of biological and medical sciences, but I still think it's deeply sad how these endowments could go to internally funding nearly all of a university's research without the need for external grants, paying off all tuition for students, run nearly all of the necessary facilities on campus grounds, pay all of the workers a living and thriving wage, and then still have plenty left over, for decades if not centuries.
Finances are a perpetual stress for everyone, and universities do nothing but hoard without purpose. It's both infuriating and disheartening.
The endowments are huge, but they are not that huge. These larger universities likely have yearly budgets in the high 100's of millions or billions. If they put the whole worth of the funds towards paying those costs they would run out of money within a decade or two. The profits of these funds can go a long way towards reducing or eliminating tuition, but they are far from actually being able to pay for the operating costs of these universities.
@@evancombs5159 depends on the school. At smaller institutions like liberal arts colleges and tier 3-5 universities, you are absolutely correct. But at tier 1 and tier 2 universities, both public and private, they have enormous incomes from companies, real estate, contracts, alumni donations, and a whole host of other sources of cash flow.
Take Johns Hopkins for example. JHU is quite literally the landlord of the NIH, a huge contract hub for the DoD and DoE via the APL, and have academics who sit on advisory boards for a number of companies in medical devices, energy, and construction. Now, their administrators are also paid exorbitantly while their staff are paid between minimum wage to a livable but not thrivable wage. Tuition is an enormous profit for the university, on top of the overhead from grants that the professors write and win-- overhead ranges from 40% to 65%, depending on the department.
Beyond cutting tuition, the university is able to cut significant costs of operation. I will agree with you that it will not be able to pay the costs in full on endowment alone, but I would expect a lion's share to be covered at least.
To add some perspective, the combined amount of endowment money of all US universities is 839 billion dollars (i.e., $839,000,000,000). The total number of college-aged Americans is about 22 million (taking a 4-year age bracket). If you divide the endowment by the people of college age, each one could get a lump sum of $38,000. That would be enough to pay tuition for a year or two, but no more than that. If only half of those 22 million attend college, you can give them 76,000 dollars each, which may cover 3-4 years of tuition at an average school, but then the money is gone. So, it's a ton of money, but not enough to give freebies to everyone.
It is wild to think that the US News Rankings might literally result in billions of dollars in economic activity in trying to game those rankings to universities advantages.
Whoever is editing these videos is doing a FANTASTIC job!!!!
With that said, though, I can only imagine what these videos would be like if someone like Prezoh edited these lol
Yale is the largest private land owner in New Hampshire under a shell company, that funds their endowment through logging operations…
"For-profit" Non-Profit education.
Good Work always makes you feel a mix of feeling amused and incredibly pissed off at the same time. Thanks for talking about this topic which is criminally under reported
That awkward moment when Harvard's endowment makes so much money it would make Scrooge McDuck jealous
Hey, it's the ninja man
Damn its been ages since I last saw you in a comments section
THE LEGEND IS BACK
Bro went to get milk and only now found way back
@@justanerd414 Nah I think he just ran out of shurikens and had to get more
i like that the channel is aware enough to have a person other than dan back up the actual facts because you have a very clear jokey-serious distinction
shoutout to the guy in 5:29 doing peace sign to the camera. Was wondering how people react like everything is normal when our baige coat guy is out in the street.
Also, you don’t HAVE to go to Harvard, Yale, etc. there are plenty of great schools that don’t cause you to go into insane levels of debt. You go so that you can tell people that you went.
Agreed. However, numbers 7 and 9 on the list are well-known State schools. ($17 Billion endowments)
*Yes, yes, you do.* If you're rich and your kid is not the best student, has modest intelligence, or just wants to be lazy then they absolutely need the networking opportunities. No price is too high to make sure they are hobnobbing with the right (rich) people. It's a ticket to staying rich and, if you are savvy enough, the elite, upper class.
I graduated UCLA with $12k in debt. Paid it off in a year and a half.
"Elite" universities are about rubberstamping the next generation of elites. That's why they have "legacy admissions."
One would have to be very foolish to believe that Harvard teaches better science or engineering than Berkeley.@@x--.
@@user-bq2ek1xf7iWhy imagine? The U.S learned that lesson. When those poors graduate the good colleges without massive debt. Then they do radical stuff like effectively enact changes in the status quo that benefit the other filthy poors. The rich decided that radical actions from educates poors cannot happeb again. Hence schools harvest vast piles of money for the sake of stability in the economic hierarchy.
Is it possible people are hiding their money there?
College tuition is getting way too expensive for middle class to afford even with financial aid program.
In 1992 College Tuition = BMW 325I , Now = BMW M5 ( Cost per year )
I have no trouble believing Dan goes to swinger parties
I had no idea the private college greed was THIS BAD overseas. In my country they are also little "non-profit" ghouls with no soul, but HOT DANG NOT IN THE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. that is scary.
The sudden zoom into Dan's angry face is why I always come back for more.
Btw, isn't Shibuya in Japan or something?
yes it's a famous neighbourhood in tokyo
Financial Aid Administrator at a large university here - it's important to note that Berea College is a work college, which is a sector of the Federal Work-Study program. So while they do not charge their students any tuition, each student is required to work a job on campus to pay for their education
Great point! Why don’t you recommend to the board at your large university that every student have the option to free tuition covered by the massive endowment so long as they work a job on campus for it! I’m sure they will be thrilled and accommodating to the suggestion
@@willlenk862 LOL not sure how much sway my words have as a lowly financial aid office worker but I completely agree with your point!
The enjoyment I get from this videos is 90% whatever the point of the video is and 10% watching people in the background.
BREAKING: We are bringing our journalistic talents to the New York Comedy Festival on November 8th for a special business conference. Tickets can are available for purchase and flexxing on your coworkers 👇
www.chelseamusichall.com/event/good-work-conference-for-innovation-and-business-greatness/
Thank you for all you do. Your Reportering is duly and truly impeccable and what is needed these days. 🫡 GOOD WORK Stay lit 🔥 Big homie.
Also a reminder that the number of administrators in these institutions has exploded over the recent years. You have to ask 'to what end?'
10/10 this channel has the best selection of topics
I understand that it would be very legally bad to spend a rich person's money on something other than what they said, but also they have the choice of taking the money or not. In my college, i used to work with the student government and lived in a house the college owned that had dips in the floor and a condemnable unclean basement. Yet we were asked to figure out where to put a million dollar statue on campus. AND only one dorm building on campus abided by ADA regulations and it was the one you had to pay extra to live in and had preference toward senior students.
I thought nonprofits were supposed to benefit society. Mine put me into loads of debt.
Freakonomics did a great multi-part series about elite colleges and why they don't follow the typical supply and demand rules of markets. Basically, as he said, their value partly comes from their exclusiveness so deans are hesitant to start eroding that. There was one example of a school that opened new campuses abroad but they're an outlier.
Behind closed doors these schools plan out how to encourage more students to apply to them knowing they won't accept any of them, just to increase how "selective" they are
As a first year business student this is one of the funniest and most informative way to ingest business information that will ever exist
from a year 3 student, good luck as the HR courses slowly destroy your soul.
Do cocaine
This topic is fascinating, and basically still mysterious. Like Brown's fund gets 50% annual return and when people ask htf they do that, they answer is "oh well we are very smart and just invested in things that have higher returns" .... WHAT???
Private equity is the worst and they're in EVERYTHING
Is Good Work hiring? Actual accountant and academic here - hell I'd even I'd donate some services. Fun, business-oriented, truly informative - Good Work is an actual force for good.
Wow, incredible work Dan! Very proud of you and what you're doing and you are NOT a disappointment compared to your physician brother AT ALL.
Another fun college endowment fact:
the Harvard endowment bought a lot of questionably legal forest in Romania some decades ago, and is now selling it off to Ikea who logs the pristine old growth
Corruption, it’s corruption.
@@cjthebeesknees+ greed
University of Penn has 39 billion dollars in an Endowment Fund!!!!
Dan Toomey always killing it.
This is the hard-hitting journalizin’ that we desperately need right now
This is better than unsolved mysteries
Really nailing the Balenciaga head tilt/eye squint during the interview segments. Good work!
Great job on keeping the video engaging
colleges have basically become banks and investment funds. and administrative costs are so high because people join the board or some random titled position at the school and get a big payday for being friends with people in high places.
How did he make it through without making a joke about the size of their "endowments"
Uhh 2:50
I have to take one exception with our WSJ reporter here. At 14:30 when she is talking about private equity financiers on college boards she states, “it’s not illegal, it’s not wrong for them to do it”. I would contend those are two different things. It may not be illegal, but it absolutely is wrong, and it should be illegal.
Breaking News: Dan Toomey is "well endowed"
There should be regulations concerning the pay (especially for board members) for non profits.
It feels surreal as hell to listen to this from Europe
Now I'm even more aggressive about not going back to college
It’s almost like college is a business and wealthy peoples greatest scarcity is social credit and prestige.
Trying to not laugh watching this at my work desk while on lunch is no easy task.
The giant cup of dunkin is my favorite recurring character in these videos
I keep hearing that the Ivies should just expand, but I don’t think that’s the solution. If the US population keeps growing while Harvard classes stay the same size, the prestige/signaling value of a Harvard degree only increases. Everybody involved (Harvard, the alumni, the students who made the cut) wants that. The Ivies don’t exist to educate the masses, they exist to pedigree the elite. We’re not going to change that.
Okay, then use the money for good instead of hoarding and multiplying it for themselves and PE
I'm also well endowed but no one made an investigative report about it 😒
Dan admitting he's a swinger finally makes the trench coat make sense, it's all adding up
Giggidy
This is the journalism that we need
Ok so the floating traffic cone legit made me have a flashback. I had to rewind to confirm. Ty.
Plz do a video on what CPAs actually do
When will you do an episode on MBAs!!!??
Among these top-tier institutions, students from the top 1% in income distribution make up a larger share of enrollment than all of the bottom 50% combined. These endowments aren’t necessarily going towards bringing in more kids from modest means.
I can’t get enough of these videos
It's crazy to hear about these mega wealthy, ever expanding economical monster universities from the US. I'm from Argentina and the public university system is HUGE and pumps out professionals like they're M&Msand it's pretty much free. Besides having to pay for the materials to use in class (notebooks, fotocopys and the like) you can freely enter any career choice and try it out. I'm 25 and have tried 4 university careers until i found out the one i enjoy. I find it crazy that in the US you choose ONCE and you're stuck with that shit for life.
here in Indonesia most of the top universities are public universities, with these prestigious public universities having pumped out well-known professionals and public figures, including ministers and presidents. some of the state universities have now no longer been fully subsidized by the government so they have to find some creative ways to get money. this is usually achieved through a separate path for students to be accepted into the uni apart from the usual nation-wide tests (called "jalur mandiri"), international study programs (where students would be facilitated to study abroad in their last year), as well as grants and donations from the alumni and businesspeople. tuition fees have somewhat increased (not skyrocket though), but since public universities in Indonesia have long been based on the principles of "kerakyatan" (idk how to translate it but it's kinda like a sense of service to the people), even a small increase of tuition fee continues to receive pushback from student organizations and the general public, so I don't see any sharp increase possible anytime soon
@@jdcsiahaan Yeah, it's kinda the same in Argentina. Any sort of front against public education, being increasing tuition fees or closing up certain branches of the schools or modifying curriculums creates huge upheavels form the student body and what we call "centro de estudiante" which is essentially a political system in publich universities where we elect a gruop of students (normally associated to a larger, national party) to be our voices for the school year. It's really hard in Argentina for any type of privatization effort or substantial change in the way the public system works. I'm all for it btw, not complaining at all, i love my country and it's university system.
Everything is ran like a business and going to school is viewed as an “investment”, it’s really a bet. Spend X amount to make Z amount. Nowadays those two variables just don’t make sense but we still feel pressure from older generations that went to better colleges that weren’t so greedy.
The systems changed but expectations stay the same. I have a better savings and less debt than the people around me that stayed in school because I found a career path that didn’t require a degree and paid just the same (becoming more and more real every day)
@@ElSagardangas oh wow our situation is strikingly similar. here in Indonesia, we have what's called the BEM - "badan eksekutif mahasiswa" (student executive body). BEMs exist on a national level (e.g. BEM SI - "All-Indonesia BEM"), university level (e.g. BEM UI - "University of Indonesi BEM", and faculty level (e.g. BEM FISIP UI - "UI Faculty of Social and Political Sciences BEM")
much of what i call "campus politicians" are also connected to a political party through association with an extra-campus organization, such as, but not limited to, the GMNI - Gerakan Mahasiswa Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Students Association), long associated with the nationalist party PDI-P, and the KAMMI - Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Muslim Indonesia (Action Union of Indonesian Muslim Students), long associated with the Islamist party PKS
of course these BEM folks do protests on national policies and legislations, the usual, but they also often do protests on campus policies, especially regarding tuition fees
@@ElSagardangas Except Argentina is complete shithole that is about to become a failed state. Nothing to be proud of lmfao.
If you’re not in front of a dumpster is it even journalism?
Thank you Rick Astley, very informative!
I love this series so much. Every second of every video is brimming with both important journalism and hilarious comedy.
TAX THE INSTITUTIONS!
Here's an idea: ban pointless, non-major colleges and bring back vocational training. Smaller fees, easier use of endowments and those programs have better long term financial outcomes for grads. We could literally reseed the middle class with all the money sitting around being hoarded.
Yup, business has spent decades coasting on the rather well trained boomer working class. They're getting ready for retirement and millenials were pushed to take programming coarse. Who is gonna fix all the stuff the boomers built?
Amazing as always!
Also worth noting that many colleges legally cannot call students, students. They are called customers.
every regionaly acredited institution refers to students as students.
So happy to see iceland THEN YOU CALL US FAKE??!?!!?
we only report the truth. even if it pertains our closest friends.
These videos should be enough for you to walk onto the writing staff of any of the major comedy news shows, but selfishly I hope you keep doing these.
As a person from luxemburg, I feel severely attacked 🥲
This really was some good work
Harvard could use their endowment to pay for all of students' tuition over around a 50-year period. Will they do it?
noooooooooooo
🌟Anyone catch the EASTER EGG: flying coffee cup 1:34 🌟
Wow, I could've bought a coffee shop with one year's tuition and I would actually have a job four years later instead of a large, thick piece of paper that I literally haven't looked at once!
Colleges are not recipients of student loan payments - they receive tuition fees in full from lenders.
A university doesn't need 10 billion dollars
Of course they do. A university is not a university without a big dj center now is it?
@@MustraOrdowonder where that money is going to
Now do the university of Texas which has the largest endowment. That school should be free for anyone in texas
Agreed, that's one of the reasons why I didn't consider going to UT. My family didn't make a lot of money, and because of that, private universities ended up being a better deal. If I remember right, UT would have cost like $10k per year, but the financial aid offered from other private universities I got into knocked their tuition down to like $5k to $6k
someone needs to investigate that pylon at 4:20
My "elite liberal arts college" bragged about their huge endowment, but never explained why we should care and ignored student protests to divest in oil
Sat through a speech by the Chancellor of Housing at a state university. He was bragging about how much money they spent on a new building so far. Meanwhile, they refused to provide the janitors, the crowd he was talking to, with glass cleaner or floor cleaning chemicals.
Just use hot water. I'm sorry but that isn't cleaning, that's rinsing.
Dan Toomey mentioning Connecticut in any fashion has made my year. Thank you, and Good Work 🎉
The Orignal $ state
The same with income as with race discrimination, giving aid to a few token individuals per year does not help, but it reinforces the problem. Tokens from excluded castes are weaponized by the ruling caste, they perpetuate the lie that anyone has the same opportunities "if they work hard enough".
The truth is, you can get good education outside "prestigious" schools. Getting a degree from these is the modern (but literal) equivalent of buying a title of nobility.
If you try or want to get a prestigious degree, you're actually encouraging the problem. Even if you do it without money from a disadvantage.
Of course a prestigious degree *will* land you better jobs. 🙂Just like titles of nobility used to. If you play the game right you could even end up in one of those boards, yum. Or in Congress.
One thing i would like to know is if these restricted donations are taxed. I know for churches if you donate for a specific purpose (without the ability for the church to reallocate those funds) that donation is taxable.
My God you're funny! Your comedic timing; s impeccable and the little blurbs that pop up are rib crackingly funny.
My two favorite things: the content. Always great break downs of the issue. Also the constant reporting in front of the dumpster. You are hilarious.
OK, another favorite: your stick footage used in every video of you "listening intently and nodding"
I wonder how many people contribute to these wonderful videos, or is it just you?
This is one of my favorite channels!