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<p>This claim is statistically unsupported. There seems to be no positive correlation between the size of an endowment and its growth. By far the fastest -growing fund (in terms of per-annum exponential growth rate) of the last 20 years has been the fund of the University of Michigan, which has grown from miniscule to being the 9th largest in the country. Harvard, which has the biggest university endowment in the world, has actually seen a lower growth rate than smaller endowments at Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT. </p>
<p>[List</a> of U.S. colleges and universities by endowment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia”>List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Hence, the notion that Caltech needs to husband its endowment in order to accelerate its growth rate is clearly unfounded. Schools like Michigan, Duke, Notre Dame, USC, and Virginia have managed to grow tiny endowments into huge ones. </p>
<p>Furthermore, and more importantly, Caltech still has one of the largest endowments per capita of any school in the nation, clearly more than MIT does. Hence, Caltech could easily afford to build new programs and still have plenty left over.</p>
<p>So, it’s not a matter of money. Then what it is it then? Probably organizational change. I can agree that probably few people currently at Caltech want new programs. But that’s obviously the wrong way to look at it, for that’s just a recipe to never make any changes. Organizational insiders never want to change anything because that would threaten their current political position within the organization. What you have to consider are the new people who would be part of your organization after you make the change. </p>
<p>For example, I’m quite certain that in the 1990’s, most employees at Microsoft didn’t want to start the Xbox division. They would obviously prefer that Microsoft continue to invest in whatever projects (i.e. Windows and MSOffice) that those employees were working on. But Bill Gates wanted Xbox. That of course attracted new employees who cared about gaming. Similarly, I’m sure that existing students and faculty at Caltech probably resisted the founding of HSS. Heck, the same could be said about the Geological and Planetary Sciences division. It’s widely regarded as the best Earth Sciences program in the country, yet it did not exist when Caltech was founded, but was launched only later. I’m sure that when it was launched, existing people at Caltech were probably resistant. Any organizational change will encounter resistance from those who are wedded to the status quo. But does that mean that Caltech should never change?</p>