Endowments Widen a Higher Education Gap

In light of the wider sustainability discussion in higher education, this 30,000-foot-view of the haves and have nots, with regard to endowments, and some of the potential consequences, is worth a read:

The result is that America’s already stratified system of higher education is becoming ever more so, and the chasm is creating all sorts of tensions as the less wealthy colleges try to compete. Even state universities are going into fund-raising overdrive and trying to increase endowments to catch up.

The wealthiest colleges can tap their endowments to give substantial financial aid to families earning $180,000 or more. They can lure star professors with high salaries and hard-to-get apartments. They are starting sophisticated new research laboratories, expanding their campuses and putting up architecturally notable buildings.

Other campuses are fighting to retain faculty, and some, with less cachet, are charging tuition that rival Harvard’s and scrambling to explain why their financial aid cannot match the most prosperous of the Ivy League.