Things I Hate: Giving Money to My Alma Mater

I loved college. It was a wonderful experience. I made some lifelong friends, learned a ton, and generally, it was top-notch, top-drawer, top-shelf, top-flight, top-hat, Topper-Returns, Top-of-the-Pops ... tops.

And I paid handsomely for it. Well, I didn't pay for it -- my dead great aunt did. Either way, I don't see much point in continuing to pay for it.

I know, there are plenty of kids who couldn't afford to pay for college without some assistance. Thing is, my school isn't very interested in them any more. My school gave up on need-blind admissions when I was a sophomore. To me, that's discrimination in favor of the rich. That's one reason I don't give.

Another is that that my school, like most, is actually loaded with dough. They're so rich that they have big wads of cash just sitting in the bank, and they operate by skimming off the top of it. The call it an "endowment," which makes it sound nice, but it's really just a big hoard of money that they should be using to run the school. That money could go towards scholarships. Or maybe reduce tuition so that normal people can actually afford to go. Do other charitable organizations have the luxury of just squirreling money away and living off of interest rather than using it to fund their operations? Do even the richest for-profit businesses get to do that? (I actually don't know, but I would imagine they wouldn't.)

But yet my college keeps coming to us alumni, hat in hand, saying how they need more money. Yeah, sure, and next I'll make out a check to Microsoft. In 2001, my school lost its shirt in the dot-com crash. This left it only a quarter-billion in its endowment. Only a quarter-billion! Mercy me! How do they put gas in their cars?

And despite losing their shirt, relatively speaking, they still had plenty of money to bring about a lot of unecessary improvements. They redid dorm interiors that were already perfectly fine. They added another cafeteria, despite the fact that I don't remember ever feeling I couldn't find a seat in any of the old ones. They added a huge exercise facility even though they already had two, and the school was full of nerds who shouldn't be exercising anyway.

So this is what my charity dollar is supposed to go towards? Giving rich kids fancier places to work out? I could feed a kid in Africa, combat global warming, contribute to AIDS research ... or give a dorm room a new chair. Somehow, I kinda think I'd do more good giving to the kid in Africa. Maybe that's just me.

In fact, comparing a wealthy and successful college to real charities is unfair to the real charities. Real charities don't get to charge exorbitant tuitions -- they make almost all of their money from donations. Colleges are really more like sports teams. They're tons of fun, you love them, they're part of who you are ... and you pay what they charge, and that should be it. As much as I love the Minnesota Twins, I don't think I'll be donating money to them any time soon.

I'll grant that colleges have a higher purpose than sports teams do. But hey, so do governments. We love our alma mater, so we voluntarily pay even more than we're charged, long after we stopping being a member. We also love our towns, our states, our countries -- yet we take every possible angle we can to avoid paying even the regular amount that they ask of us in taxes. And that's while we are still a member of those places, still benefitting from their work. And forget about giving them something extra.

In short, it will be a great day when our governments get all the money they need and our private colleges have to have a bake sale to buy a building.