ucab…there are shortages in multiple specialties. family medicine/general medicine is just one(aka primary care)
The shortage of primary care is a function of insurance companies’ reimbursements. Nobody wants to see 10 times the patients for 1/4 the money of the specialists. They end up switching to things with a better return - botox injections, pain management, or working as hospitalists. I forget which poster here has a husband who dropped out of primary care because being a high school teacher paid better.
I would open an academic research station for graduate students in life sciences, with rare and endangered species similar to the Smithsonian one in Front Royal, VA. By sheer coincidence it would be near good skiing, mountain climbing and trout fishing.
ETA: My mother’s cousin did have a building he paid for at his alma mater, recently torn down. My wife’s name is on a building at her alma mater - carved onto one brick in the entry way surrounded by about 2000 others.
I’d start a program at our HS that would fund students’ extracurricular programs (summer and during the school year) - they’d have to find the programs they were interested in and apply for funding. I think this is one area where the divide between haves and have nots is really felt and each student should have at least one chance to ask themselves “what really interests me, if I could go do/study/see anything, what would it be?” Think how infectious it would be once students started to return to the school and shared their experiences with friends. I think this is the keystone for an educated, thoughtful person and once it’s set in place, will continue lifelong.
Another quick thought is to provide, at our local public high school, a boarding option, maybe in the last two years. Of course it would have to be scandal free and tightly regulated. Our HS has a mixed population by any measure, including a local homeless shelter. There are many sides to boarding pro and con, but it would be interesting to have an option if transportation, meals, time commitments, family issues, etc. are such that living with family or guardians during the week isn’t optimal.
I’ve had the first thought for some time, but the last one just came as I allowed myself to dream what I would do with the money.
Hard question, I don’t know if I would donate it to a school or not per se (certainly not my alma mater, which unlike when I went there has a huge endowment, and instead of spending money of financial aid and scholarships, spends 10 million bucks to buy a brownstone to attract an ‘elite’ teacher barf). One thing I would think of is setting up an endowment to support programs teaching civics, something they don’t do any more in most schools and so forth, so that people would understand how the government works, what it is meant to do, what the constitution is and isn’t and so forth, so that when they are evaluating politicians and policies they actually can understand how things work and understand their own part in things. There used to be a clothing chain that claimed an educated consumer was their best customer, in a democracy an educated electorate make better choices.
Some of the money would go to the department where I got my MS for those grad students who serve as teaching assistants. The money would pay for seminars on teaching methods, better instructional supervision of the TAs in lab sections, funding for academic coursework taken during summer sessions that the TAs couldn’t squeeze into their schedules during the regular school year, and one additional semester of full funding (tuition/fees/living stipend) with no teaching responsibilities for each year of TA service. I’d name the program for my old advisor who did his level best, but whose hands were tied by funding issues. Then I’d talk with Bonner and Gates about scaling this sort of thing up with someone else’s money
The rest of the money would go to community colleges to endow need and merit-based scholarships like the one Happykid had for two years of tuition and fees. The scholarship team at her old CC would be asked to advise on the design of this program.
musicprint “educated consumer was their best customer” that was syms…they have gone out of business but interestingly the founder gave 20+ million to yeshiva university business school back in the 1980’s.
hence the name
Sy Syms School of Business
I’m not @romanigypsyeyes, but an organization is different from a private donor who just throws $100 million at a developing nation to “end world hunger.” Part of the reason there IS hunger in developing nations are corrupt or inept officials and a lack of infrastructure. Sometimes the government just takes that aid and it never gets to the people. Sometimes they distribute it to their friends and supporters, the people who already have what they need. Sometimes they take it and ration it out to the people, using it as a carrot to get the people to do what they want. Sometimes the aid is appreciated and sits, unused, on a tarmac somewhere rotting because although all the food is bought there’s no way to deliver it to the folks who need it the most. There are hundreds of stories out there of exactly these things happening. And sometimes simply pumping money in harms or messes with the economy. These things have to be done with thought and care.
But this is all kind of moot because the topic question was “If you had $100 million to give to a school…” There are lots of worthy causes to give to and giving to a college is no more or less worthy than any of the charities listed above.
With that said, I’d give my $100 million to my alma mater, Spelman College. I’d give the majority of it as an unrestricted gift. Unrestricted gifts are important - they allow the college to apply your money to where it’s needed the most, and keep up with the changing nature of the educational landscape. A famous recent example is Sweet Briar; when they needed to stay open, they couldn’t use some of their funds to do things they needed because much of the money they had access to were restricted gifts given for some purpose. I know people don’t like the idea of their money going to pay administrators or keep the plumbing running, but those are necessary functions at any college. Even the money sitting in an endowment generates income for the college.
However, I would specify that a small percentage - maybe 10%, which is still $10 million - go towards endowing scholarships. Some scholarships would be full merit scholarships for first-generation college students at Spelman, and smaller scholarships would be designated for students who want to study abroad and need gap funding to cover the difference between their financial aid and the cost of the program. I’d let Spelman specify other criteria and select their own students.
In any case, I’d guess that’s why schools like Harvard and Yale get millions from donors. People have special attachments to their alma mater, and a school like Yale is much more likely to have alumni donors that can give millions than a school like Spelman.