tylerbickford.bsky.social
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Good story otherwise!
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I agree with this with the caveat that for many people "business as usual" means defying their supervisors and directives from agencies to continue doing work that is supposedly now prohibited; I think for a lot of people the default is to stop doing a lot of good things they were doing.
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I just think the argument that (quasi-)endowments are only for the future is taking a side in a political disagreement about institutional priorities; it is not a neutral technocratic description. It's a reasonable position to hold, but it is often presented as a fact rather than a position.
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the liquidity point is fair, but it is also fair to argue that universities should rebalance some of their holdings into more liquid assets. It is a mistake to think of endowments as a "rainy day fund," but it also would not be crazy for these orgs to use some of these assets as rainy day funds!
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thank you!
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Right, but the "has to" is usually designated by the board, rather than an external donor/contract. So it's not legally binding. It may be prudent! It definitely should not be spent to replace funding that the government should be providing. (It should be spent on students and employees 🙃)
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it's always buried somewhere in their audited financial statements, either as "unrestricted" or "quasi endowment." I agree it's only 25% and does not solve this problem, and I also strongly agree that the feds need to fully fund research regardless of whether big universities should hoard less cash
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I strongly believe this is a separate question from whether the feds should fully fund research--even if we should spend more of "endowments" on operating expenses, that is not any sort of argument for reducing government support for research and higher education. But we should still be accurate
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it is just important that large portions of what many universities call "endowments" are in fact unrestricted, and it is fair for people to argue over how those funds are used. The story that endowments are restricted by donor agreements is only partially true, and it is misleading.
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most big endowments have huge, often majority, components that are unrestricted
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Also gifts that are restricted to "financial aid" pass through and become tuition, which is unrestricted general revenue. It is a nice way for fundraisers to raise effectively unrestricted revenues while still telling faculty/staff they can't spend the money bc it wld take from students
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I agree it is not straightforward to just fix this with endowments, but this is not quite right. "Distributions" are different than restrictions. At UMich $5.6 billion is unrestricted.
2024.annualreport.umich.edu/uploads/fy24...
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Institutions already subsidize IDCs at a high rate: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzNc...
And in a lot more depth:
www.cogr.edu/sites/defaul...
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Every research uni CFO will tell you that even with IDCs externally funded research does not pay for itself and is cross-subsidized by the rest of the university budget.
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Even w indirect cost recovery (what this policy affects), externally funded research always costs more than it brings in. It is always subsidized by tuition and state appropriations. This will definitely impact undergrad students at R1 schools, w even higher tuition or major cuts to their programs
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Maybe it’s not a biopic
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thanks Chris! yes let’s get this over the line
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somehow this feels longer ago than when we had blogs
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the worst
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feels like yesterday?
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cf @ncecire.bsky.social’s classic on silver and peurility nataliacecire.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-...
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(and it’s free!)
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project gutenberg isn’t perfect but you at least usually know you’re not getting some garbage ai abridgement www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2701
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hi!!!