Sunday, February 10, 2008

For Sunday discussion--Should U-M (and others) open up huge endowments before passing increases onto students?

Recently, Governor Granholm has asked universities in the state with massive endowments to cut students some slack and dip into that before seemingly automatically simply raising college costs for students. A Congressional Research Service study found U-M spent 1.3 percent of its endowment on undergraduate financial aid in the 2004-2005 academic year, which is considered very low.

Michigan State University sits on a 1.2 billion dollar endowment while U-M sits on, are you ready, a 7.1 billion endowment fund.

At U-M, tuition went up 7.4 percent in the fall.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

With that kind of scratch in the coffers perhaps they should also lay off monies from our cash-strapped state for a couple years.

Johnny Action Space Punk said...

That DOES sound logical Trixie. I'm sure U-M is kinda looking the other way whistling when their 7.1 billion endowment is ever brought up for discussion. I also detest earmarked contributions some people make to some schools. There was a rather dicey issue a few years ago at Oklahoma State were a well do do benefactor wanted to donate huge monies but ONLY If it ALL went to the football program, despite the Universities pressing needs elsewhere, like ACADEMICS.