<p>I think you have a somewhat strange view of what constitutes “research universities” and “peers.” Let’s start with your assertion that we not compare the U of C, Harvard, and Stanford to Princeton, because Princeton doesn’t teach medicine or law. Princeton’s endowment, per capita, according to the last figures I was looking at, the largest in the world. That is, larger than Harvard, larger than Stanford, etc. It just hasn’t raised a comparable about to those places in its most recent capital campaign. In other words, rather than being behind in arguambly the most important way of measuring endowments, Princeton not only is not at a disadvantage, it is actually ahead of Harvard and Stanford.</p>
<p>But behind your argument is the notion that in order to compare universities, they need to be offering more or less the same fields of instruction. I think that misconstrues what is going on at the top universities in the country. All universities teach some fields and lack others. Yes, Princeton doesn’t have law and medicine as graduate professional programs, or a business school – though it does offer a graduate degree in finance. The U of C, by comparison lacks engineering (a matter much commented on here). Which disciplines or programs do you choose to making the comparison? For whom: Undergraduates? Graduate students? Faculty? Writing one or the other university out of a comparison, at a certain point, is obviously arbitrary. The reality is that all the best schools are competing with each other across a range of metrics, where some perform better than others in some areas and others in other areas. (Which is just another way of saying what should be obvious: There is no <em>best</em> school by any universal measure.)</p>
<p>Perhaps a better way of getting an idea of what is really going on in terms of the relationship of fundraising is to look at which academic departments or schools within a university (or even a college) are driving its fundraising, and whether these efforts are used to support the school in other areas. </p>
<p>The U of C is handicapped in terms of its fundraising and donor base. That is undeniable, and it is a direct result of policies begun in the 1930s by Hutchins. That the school is trying to redress this is also undeniable. I think this discussion started with you dismissing the recent fundraising amount for a number of reasons, but mostly because it was more along the lines of Yale’s, Columbia’s and Duke’s fundraising and fell short of Harvard’s and Stanford’s. I’m not sure what your dismissal is supposed to prove, though, other than that as a matter of raw numbers, the U of C is not as wealthy as Harvard or Stanford, which I don’t think anyone was seriously disputing. </p>
<p>Your focus solely raw numbers doesn’t take account of another dynamic here, which we have not touched on: That is how efficiently schools use their endowments. Princeton, for instance, is not terribly efficient with its money. Projects regularly balloon out of control and cost far more than originally planned or are far less effective than anticipated, and – for the most part – the place doesn’t worry about that too much. They just throw more money at the problem to solve it. That leads to an odd complacency in the ethos of the place. I would hazard to say (without much more than anecdotal evidence) that the U of C does more with less than many of its peers. From that perspective, adding 1B to the U of C’s endowment has more of an effect than adding 1B to Harvard’s. Or perhaps even than adding 4B. I don’t mean this just as a matter of percentages, but also as a matter of institutional culture. </p>
<p>In other words, again, the raw numbers only tell part of the story – and are, at best, a very rough guide to what is probably going on.</p>