Hmm. I'm afraid I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with my right honourable friend.
In the first instance, my friend is operating under the misapprehension that "real" charities don't squirrel away their money and live off the interest. Au contraire, my good man. Take a glance at Forbes' list of the top 200 charities in the U.S. Last year, there were 21 charities with net assets over one billion dollars. That’s the stuff they’ve kept over the years, squirrel-like. They regularly (when the stock market doesn't crash, of course) earn tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in investment income each year, which they use to help fund their operations, while the principal sits in Scrooge McDuck’s swimming pool.
And speaking of ducks (or geese, actually)…. An argument could be made that neither these charities nor colleges should be encouraged to become financial geese - building up a huge nest egg and just sitting on it, while goslings of investment income emerge every year to do the work of the gander. My honourable friend would have you slaughter that goose each year, and feast upon its donated flesh. But what, I ask, is more valuable: the present value of today's single goose, which must be replaced in its entirety every year, or tomorrow's limitless flock of goslings, born of one cared-for, always-growing, and well-endowed goose? I leave that to the economists to debate.
(Note to the reader: ignore the foregoing paragraph, if you want; I’m afraid it’s rather strained and doesn’t make sense. But I still like it, so I left it in. If you want to read a thoughtful analysis of encouraging nonprofits to reduce their surpluses by taxing them, take a gander at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/65xx/doc6567/07-21-UntaxedBus.pdf.)
And non-profits abound that ask for donations beyond an initial fee. I like the zoo. They charge me twenty dollars to see the hippopotamuses. Then they ask me to spend fifty dollars to join the Zoological Society. What for? I already gave them my money. If I want to see another hippo, fine - I'll go back and hand over another appleduster (new slang for a twenty dollar bill). Why should I keep paying for something I already got the benefit from?
Well, donations don’t have to be seen as retroactively increased payments for something you already bought. You can give money to the zoo or a college because you have warm, fuzzy feelings today about the good times you had there. Or you can give to them because you want the zoo or your college to be around for the next generation – and hopefully in better shape than when you went there.
The fact is, fees (and tuitions) usually only cover a smallish percent of institutional costs. Most established charities depend on some balance of fees, grants by foundations and governments, and investment income (which would be replaced by gooseflesh in Ed’s endowment-less scheme). And of course, donations by people like you. If people didn't donate to the zoo by joining the Zoological Society, they might have to start killing endangered animals because they ran out of money to buy Okapi Chow.
Of course, no one forces anyone to donate extra money to a fee-charging charity. (Except of course for the Mobsters' Fund for We Won't Break Your Elbows If You Give Us A Lot of Money Right Now.) You give to the ones you like, according to how much you have and want to give. If you hate okapis, don’t join the zoo. If you think the zoo has started to spend too much money on muskrat enclosures, stop giving them money. If you don’t think your college should be spending money on stairmasters, don’t give them anything.
And not to nitpick, but people can donate to the government, too. Not usually as a “here’s double my tax bill, made out to The Government”, but go to any National Parks website, and you can donate your money directly to that government-run entity.
As for need-blindness, there are few colleges who remain totally need-blind these days. But my understanding is that most places are still something like 80-90% need-blind, meaning that they take financial ability into account only for borderline admittees and wait-list kids. And they meet the full need of anyone that they do admit. So money for scholarships is still useful.
Bottom line is, colleges are worthy recipients of charitable giving. And each dollar you give saves the life of an okapi. So please, give today.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Hmmm. I guess I feel like I kind of already responded to this debate during the last post, but I also like to respond to every blog post. So....while I think I was mostly disagreeing with the last post about endowments and donating money to alma maters (provided they don't advertise spending said money on frivolous items), I will bring up a fundamental issue at hand. Are private colleges really a good idea? I'm already paying taxes for public colleges, should I really send my kids to private college? This may be hypocritical seeing as I went to public school and loved it and still believe that the education I got there was better than what I could have gotten at a state school, but if we only had state schools, wouldn't they be better? I mean can't the arguments against private high schools easily extend to private colleges?
I still feel like until I get a job that pays me well, I don't owe my alma mater anything! And don't get me started on my HIGH SCHOOL asking for money all the time, although I guess since that now costs more than some colleges do, they need to beg for money from alums as well.
I love okapi.
Emily gets at a real solution to this whole thing, which I will run with, perhaps beyond what she meant: I say make most colleges funded entirely by the government, just the same way as with public high schools. Not controlled by the government, mind you, but funded by them. It would mean more taxes, but would also mean that people don't have to knock their brains in trying to send their kids to college.
But the real reason most colleges should be funded by the government is that a college education is essentially a prerequisite for almost all jobs in this country. At one time, high school was pretty much all people could expect to complete or need to get a reasonable job, but the bar has been raised, and our expectations should raise with it.
I suppose you should still have some private colleges, the same way you have some private high schools. I just think there should be a lot more public colleges, and they should be free. Gotta adjust to the changing educational demands of the times.
And moreover, our current system means a lot of talented kids are slipping through the cracks and being unable to go to college at all, just because they're poor. Sure, some get scholarships, but only the supersmart. The B students who are poor deserve a chance too.
Maybe the first step would be to create more free colleges, paid for entirely by the government. Of course, like all my solutions, it means bringing our tax level up near the level of the rest of the civilized world, and that's crazy talk! And I think Britain has free colleges, paid for by the government. Probably other European nations do too. I haven't really done the research on that.
Wow, this ended up being really long. Probably a blog post in itself. Well, too late now.
I think Ed's response is kind of funny, actually, because as I was reading the first part, I was thinking something like this:
"Whaa...? What, are you going to make some commie LAW against private schools? If someone wants to charge money for schooling and there are enough suckers to pay for it, who are we to stop them?"
Then Ed said something about how I guess there could still be some private schools and my thoughts were something like this:
"Cha...Like, yeah!?"
Anyway, I actually think the system is pretty good. There are the lucky few with dead great aunts (Ed) and grandmothers who made a fortune off of cigarette manufacturer's stock (me) who foolishly blow the whole wad on a really fun private school and then have almost nothing to show for it (me) and there are people who went to a public university (my husband), were socially miserable with all the frat jocks, but ended up with far better jobs at Microsoft than some of those snooty private school grads (me). Ummmmm....my point? Oh yeah, that there are a lot of pretty cheap public colleges out there and once you have your degree, where it actually came from doesn't matter as much as whether you're a reliable employee who can do a good job.
Ummmm....but yeah, give money wherever you want. Hell. Donate to Microsoft if you want. People are all, "oh, I hate Microsoft" and all, but you know what, they have the best medical benefits package I've ever heard of for their freakin' 70,000 employees. Consider that with their vise-like grip on the software market, their mesmerizing computers-in-every-classroom propaganda, and their mammoth pile of cash, and you've basically got, in Microsoft, a socialist government and population all its own. All it needs is a flag.
Yeah, but my point is that the "pretty cheap" colleges you talk about are still horrendously expensive by any rational measure. Thousands of dollars per semester just to get what you need to get the most entry-level of jobs. You shouldn't have to spend that much just to enter the workforce. Public universities stil cost way too much when a college education is essentaily a prerequisite for getting a decent job. Why should the rules be so different for high school than for colleges, when a college education is so necessary nowadays?
You know, I'm really curious to know what kind of financial aid a public university would offer to a dirt-poor person. Would a place like the University of Minnesota give a full scholarship to a nice, B-student? Probably not, but I know there are options that make college possible. What is it that makes me so averse to free colleges? I don't know - maybe it's this: we have, just built right into our society, some really amazing tax-funded social programs, primarily 12 years of free education and a lifetime of use of public libraries. I don't think adding free colleges is going to change anything except, maybe, devalue the Bachelor's degree. Our societal structure is such that everyone is going to pay for everyone to make it to adulthood and then after that, you're on your own. And frankly, I think that's as it should be. The rules are indeed changing - you're right about it being harder for high school grads to get good jobs and work their way up (though not impossible, as my old maxed-out-at-GED IT guy demonstrated) - but at the same time, the resources are there even for the poor folk to make it work. It's really up to them to make the most of those resources, starting with not screwing up in high school and graduating as a C- student, and continuing on to taking the initiative to apply for grants, loans, work-study opportunities, etc. It's all just part of being a responsible adult.
Rather than spend our money on free colleges, we'd be better off pouring it into improving the ways in which we can help those high school screwups not be high school screwups anymore. We all know that high schools need work and no one knows what to do about it, but if piles of money were funneled effectively into schools that have highest dropout rates, dramatically lowering their class sizes, increasing the number of counselors, adding more vocational classes, creating career tracks that offer appropriate classes, creating more pass/fail classes, etc. etc., we would, in theory, increase the quality of our workforce and, by extension, increase the value of the high school diploma, therefore rendering free colleges an unnecessary expense.
Always fun to dream a little dream...
Hm, interesting theory. It would sure be nice if a high school education became enough to get a good job again. I often wonder if everyone really needs a college education. I mean, it was necessary for me, and for a lot of people, and I do believe in a libreal arts education, but does everyone in the country really need to read The Canterbury Tales and learn calculus? I'm not sure they do, and most definitely don't want to. And maybe we're just wasting time and money forcing almost everyone do it.
Germany's system makes a lot of sense sometimes -- you find out pretty early on, like around 13, if you're going the college route or the vocational training route. You pick which track is right for you and run with it and by the time you're 18, you can either get a solid job or go read Cateruburische Talensie and learn calculusinschinshlingheimer.
But, there's also the issue that in this country, there is a huge demand for workers in the fields that require more education, such as the sciences and technology, and not much demand for workers with little education. So maybe that German thing wouldn't work, because we really don't need that many people to work in the trades. I don't even know if there are "trades" any more. Is "barista" a trade?
Yeah, I've heard about the German system and often thought about how it seemed like a good idea. On the one hand, you don't want to deny a kid a chance enter the college-trained professions, but on the other hand, often by 13 or 15, a kid knows which way they're going to go, anyway.
I have a friend who is a high school science teacher who once said he wished there were a true vocational route that high schoolers could take, because he knew that the science he had to teach in his remedial science class was pretty unrelated to whatever the kids were going to end up doing.
We might be viewing everything through our little college-educated glasses, too. I think about what my high school-educated grandparents did (gramma was a postmaster, grandpa was her clerk, other grandpa had a grocery store) and those jobs are still out there and they're out there for high school grads. I never think about them as options for me, but if my life were a little different, a career in the post office (or UPS or whatever) or as a butcher/baker/candlestick maker at the local SuperFoods, might be just fine.
Or I might have to move to China to find a job in the factories that used to be here in the ol' red white and blue...I just don't know.
Yeah, it's tough. Where I work now is essentially a trade school (we call it a "career college") that awards Bachelor's and Associate degrees in things like Business Administration and Paralegal and Medical Assistant. Professionals, but not necessarily high-status ones. It's almost all students who are in their mid-20s, working some crappy retail job, who want more stable jobs. So they have families, full-time jobs, and have to work toward a degree all at once. I can't help but think our success is a symptom of a failure in the more conventional system. Shouldn't there have been an easier way for these folks to get these practical, profession-driven degrees when they were 18, instead of going to a state school, learning French, dropping out, and then working at McDonald's for 5 years? Or, moreover, many were kids who couldn't afford college but because we work really hard to get them financial aid (and "regular" schools do not, at all), and also because they have full-time jobs, now they're able to go for it. I'm glad they're able to do it through our school, but I wish they had been better served earlier, when they were younger and had fewer other responsibilities.
Post a Comment