| The endowment hardly effects research, not at all really in my experience. PLME has it's own money to give separate funding to undergraduates for research
I've seen very few times where classes were impossible to get into-- it takes a little pushing and shoving on your part and getting up at 8am to register immediately and to do what you can (email and meet with the professor) sometimes, but actually, seminars are far more likely to fill than anything like Intro to Neuro or City Politics which practically takes an unlimited number of students.
I actually think the small endowment is really just something people don't have perspective on-- our endowment is top 25 in the country, it just so happens to be smaller than most Ivies because Brown made the transition from a regional school to national school later than those locations and because Brown doesn't have large professional schools which are huge areas of funding potential. The way it effects the education and academics here is 0. It can effect Financial Aid (we just cannot afford to offer as much as Harvard, for instance). Research money never comes from the endowment-- it comes from grants, so it really has very little effect. There is not a single piece of equipment we need in chemistry that we don't have and the experience I've had with science is if you need it, we have it, will buy it, or will pay to send you where it is. |