John Paulson donates US$400mil to Harvard

[Porker]

Hedge-fund magnate John Paulson is donating $400 million to Harvard University, the school said Wednesday, the largest gift in the school’s 379-year-old history and among the biggest ever to a U.S. university.

The money will be used to endow the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which will be renamed after Mr. Paulson.

This “extraordinary gift will enable the growth and ensure the strength of engineering and applied sciences at Harvard for the benefit of generations to come,” said Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust.

Mr. Paulson graduated from Harvard’s Business School in 1980 and started an eponymous hedge fund in 1994. His firm made $15 billion in 2007 when it collected on bets that the housing market would collapse. Mr. Paulson personally pocketed $4 billion.

The money will provide “a solid endowment for faculty development, research, scholarships and financial aid,” Mr. Paulson said in a statement.

The gift comes on the heels of two other massive donations by alumni to Harvard, which has an endowment of $36 billion, one of the largest in the U.S. In 2014, hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin donated $150 million to the school, largely to be used for financial aid. At the time it was the largest gift in the school’s history.

Less than a year later the family of Gerald Chan, a Harvard-educated investor, donated $350 million to the university’s school of public health.

Other megagifts to top schools in recent years include $350 million to Cornell; $350 million to Johns Hopkins; $250 million to Yale and $225 million to the University of Pennsylvania.

The gifts highlight the diverging fortunes of the nation’s colleges. The 10 richest institutions held nearly one-third of total cash and investments at four-year schools in fiscal 2014, while the top 40 accounted for two-thirds, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

Wealth was concentrated among elite schools at similar rates before the financial crisis, but the gap shrunk as top schools lost big on more-volatile investments in 2008 and 2009.

The rising fortunes of the wealthy universities are due to several factors, including the growing use of large-scale data analytics, which give college fundraisers a clearer picture of not only who has the capacity to give but who has the desire. That information makes large capital campaigns increasingly efficient and boosts the advantages of wealthier schools that produce wealthier alumni.

Caroline Hoxby, a professor at Stanford who studies the economics of higher education, likens universities to venture-capital firms: They seek out the best students, invest heavily and frequently at a lossoften well beyond the cost of tuitionand hope to produce a handful of great successes who will give back enormous gifts or influence others to do so.

Mr. Paulson’s gift will help transform a new campus Harvard is developing in the Boston neighborhood of Allston, across the Charles River from Cambridge. Allston has long been home to the business school and the football stadium, but Harvard is poised to begin construction on a 500,000-to-600,000- square-foot complex that will house part of the Engineering and Applied Sciences School, according to an article in Harvard Magazine. That complex is part of a much larger expansion.

[Alheych]

 

His firm made $15 billion in 2007 when it collected on bets that the housing market would collapse. Mr. Paulson personally pocketed $4 billion.

 

 

wonder how much he had to short...

[Volvobrick]

Going to change my name to "Harvard"....

 

Who knows someone might donate to my account!

 

 

[Alheych]

An interesting perspective... I've felt the same way with certain healthcare institutes in Singapore.

 

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8723189/john-paulson-harvard-donation

 

For the love of God, rich people, stop giving Harvard money

Let me be extremely clear: Harvard is not a charity. If you want to donate to it as a bribe to help your kids get in, go nuts. It's not the absolute worst thing you could do with your money. Kidnapping people and making them fight to the death in gladiator pits would be worse. But if you want to make the world a better place, your dollars are better spent literally anywhere else...

 

 

Edited June 3, 2015 by Alheych

[Vid]

I'm sure Harvard is not short on money. The donation is to put his name there on a building for eternity.

[Porker]

Someone commented on Wall Street Journal that Harvard is a financial institution that has education as aside business. It runs a US$36Bil endowment

[Wt_know]

kena mocked left right centre ... lol

Edited June 4, 2015 by Wt_know

[Lala81]

I'm sure Harvard is not short on money. The donation is to put his name there on a building for eternity.

 

I found it objectionable to name an entire school purely based how much $ u donate.

 

sigh.

[Lala81]

Similarly with the public hospitals

[WilliamY]

Sometimes I think we get emotional and clarity becomes blurred.

 

1. People who have money to donate must have earned the money themselves (not stolen) and have the right to donate their money where they want to donate as long as it serves the human race to improve.

 

2. We never seem to be really harsh on those "volunteers" at RC especially those whose aim is to get their children to good school. Grassroot volunteers so can get priority in ballot and choice parking spaces. We need to learn that the world is unfair. How people volunteer their time, money or effort is a good thing but their motives is something ethically debatable.

 

3. With regards to the poor, we have to ask ourselves, why there are poor people in the world? why 1% of the world's population actually controlling the rest of the 99% of the population? We need also to ask why India spent millions of dollars on space exploration but not use the tax-payers money to elevated the poor from their misery? closer to home, why Singapore continually every year increases her budget to buy more and more expensive weapons, yet we can let a limped terrorist escape from custody and yet we spend so little on the less fortunate, some ministers you want to eat at hawker centre, food court, restaurant? Such is the mentality.

 

4. We can all donate our money to the poor? But each of us (if honest) have a preference, be it personal experience or conviction. Eg a person with a family dying of cancer would rather donate their money to cancer research after seeing their relatives suffer from cancer. Or someone donating to a half way house after looking at the hard life of abandoned children. We don't know Paulson's reasons be it "good or bad", the money helps more people to study in Harvard. Why do we get so worked up about Paulson? Close to home we spent more than 1/2 a billion dollars on scholarship for foreigners and these are tax-payers money and not from public who wish to donate their money this way. Many of these scholarship and their terms of conditions are never realised.

 

5. We are always quick to judge and criticise but we should also look at our own circumstances before we do that. Anybody with their hard earn money can donate to anybody they wish and who are we to tell them what to do? There is a story sometime ago, a rich old lady left millions of dollars to a cat or a dog. To some it is sinful but to others, it was this animal that brought the most joy and meaning to her life in the later part of her life.

 

6. In short, my humble take is, I am glad and grateful that people are generous enough to donate and this may encourage others to donate to rather then them like the sultan of brunei who is so rich who have 2000 odd expensive cars in his garage, imagine what 2000 classic cars sold can be used for to help the poor orang asli. In reality there is nothing wrong with the sultan as it is his own money.

 

7. Rather than looking and value judge others, I have learnt from this, that my motives to volunteer or donate should be as "pure" as possible from now on.

[Kb27]

I heard a lot of students are in lifelong debt going to college in US.

 

He should have distributed it to them instead of giving to Harvard.

[Hydrocarbon]

He made money on the stock markets, his money, his donation. Doesn't really affect me one bit.

 

Not like he's putting 400M into politicians pockets to make them pass legislation that negatively affects me or us (not least in this case). I think many people will be dulan if other people start analysing their spending and criticising them for not spending money on what the others want. But still, people's own money, their own taichi.

 

Now, for taxpayers money... That's a different case...

[Wt_know]

if you google ... in usa many jobless adult go further study to purposely take student loan so that they can continue to live on loan ... i know who want to do it if they can find a job but there are many exploiters

one can study from diploma to degree to master to phd ... just to keep taking loan ... lol

 

I heard a lot of students are in lifelong debt going to college in US.

 

He should have distributed it to them instead of giving to Harvard.

 

Edited June 4, 2015 by Wt_know

[Lala81]

In SG, i don't understand the double standards for public facilities

 

OCBC want to name the national stadium, reject.

Public hospital built at cost 1 billion+ dollars to tax payers but pte donor pay 100 mil can name the hospital NTFGH or KTPH.

 

Medical school 100+ years history, donate money, rename the whole school to his name.

 

U want to build a private school and name it whatever u want, go ahead. But these are still largely public funded buildings or institutions.

 

Lol no one just want a library named after them anymore.

[Porker]

In SG, i don't understand the double standards for public facilities

 

OCBC want to name the national stadium, reject.

Public hospital built at cost 1 billion+ dollars to tax payers but pte donor pay 100 mil can name the hospital NTFGH or KTPH.

 

Medical school 100+ years history, donate money, rename the whole school to his name.

 

U want to build a private school and name it whatever u want, go ahead. But these are still largely public funded buildings or institutions.

 

Lol no one just want a library named after them anymore.

Double standard aside, the naminng rights practise is a way of raising funds so the public benefits from it as the Capex is subsidised by the donation.

[Mustank]

In SG, i don't understand the double standards for public facilities

 

OCBC want to name the national stadium, reject.

Public hospital built at cost 1 billion+ dollars to tax payers but pte donor pay 100 mil can name the hospital NTFGH or KTPH.

 

Medical school 100+ years history, donate money, rename the whole school to his name.

 

U want to build a private school and name it whatever u want, go ahead. But these are still largely public funded buildings or institutions.

 

Lol no one just want a library named after them anymore.

 

anyone wanna donate woodbridge or sewege plant?

[Lala81]

Double standard aside, the naminng rights practise is a way of raising funds so the public benefits from it as the Capex is subsidised by the donation.

 

Lol our govt is too pragmatic.

Can open up every new road in singapore for public bidding. Why use such a silly name like MCE. Name the expressway after yourself!

 

Used to be just a library or wing is named after you.

Now can name hospital.

Next time name a whole new town after yourself. Name Terminal 4 after yourself lah.

Haha lots of branding opportunities.

Edited June 4, 2015 by Lala81

[Lala81]

 

anyone wanna donate woodbridge or sewege plant?

 

Woodbridge maybe only drug company bah.