… here. None of it’s quite good enough to be included in the body of this post. But you might see something you like.
… here. None of it’s quite good enough to be included in the body of this post. But you might see something you like.
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June 5th, 2015 at 4:16AM
LOL:) Am I reading this right? Harvard . . . engineering? Think Norman Mailer, maybe.
Okay, $400 mill. Think extremely high-end and extremely expensive test equipment, plus an internal bureaucracy to oversee its use. A few endowed chairs, and, hey, you’re good to go.
June 5th, 2015 at 9:31AM
It’s sort of ironic: Paulson made his money by seeing what others didn’t….but when it comes time to give some of it away, he does the most conventional thing possible.
June 5th, 2015 at 5:47PM
Since the turn of the century, Harvard has made a considerable investment in engineering, transforming its old Division of Applied Science (where everyone was the Gordon McKay Professor of this or that, named after a benefactor whose gift in 1949 would be worth $156M today) into the School of Engineering and Applied Science. It now competes with top engineering schools for undergraduates and graduate students and raids them for faculty. Given Harvard’s budgetary structure (“every tub on its own bottom”), the Paulson gift can actually do some good in enabling construction of modern engineering facilities (despite the fact the Marie Curie discovered radium in an unheated Paris shed, that’s not how it works today) at the Allston site. Outstanding facilities attract both students and faculty in engineering. The key lies in how the Paulson gift is structured: (1) how much will be raked off by Harvard’s central administration for “relief of general funds”; if Harvard SEAS is smart, it will have negotiated this so that the funds being relieved are directed to things that benefit it anyway (e.g. financial aid); and (2) how much is set as a matching challenge, so other donors don’t stop giving; if it’s something like 35%, which is common, then it will take a mini-capital campaign in itself just to collect that portion of the big gift, which could take years. For the record, I do not work at Harvard, but at another Famous Eastern University for which the development of SEAS at Harvard now poses a serious challenge in attracting engineering talent.
June 5th, 2015 at 9:22PM
I’ve always been amused by the fact one can acquire an A.B. in engineering at Harvard College instead of a bachelor’s of science, if one so chooses. I had an undergraduate blockmate do that. I think it’s an endearing quirk of the liberal arts tradition.
June 6th, 2015 at 11:25AM
Polish Peter, thanks. What I was thinking was our local Podunk Tech, where an energetic junior prof was barred by the department chair from using recently acquired equipment, and had a career lab tech assigned to shadow him. That much I know from the newspaper account of their confrontation. The insider story is plain ol’ professional jealousy.
You’re right that a well-managed gift will likely do good.