
MIT Gets $140M Pledge from Anonymous Donor - gwintrob
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit-gets-140-million-pledge-from-anonymous-donor-1496866275
======
finolex1
It would be interesting to compare the utility of one large $100 million+
grant to an institution like MIT, Yale or Harvard that is already well-
endowed, compared to a hundred different million dollar grants to institutions
across the USA or the world, where the money might arguably be more
effectively used or sorely needed.

The counterpoint would be that the money could support fundamental research
that eventually results in a much larger payoff to the world at large, but I'm
not convinced that this outweighs the benefits of funding hundreds, or even
thousands of students/scientists in less prominent schools who might go on to
make such discoveries themselves.

Of course, all this assumes that donor's primary aim is to make the largest
possible impact, when in all likelihood it's motivated more by an affinity for
the school, or in the case of other donors, prestige from having their name on
the walls.

~~~
fsloth
"I'm not convinced that this outweighs the benefits of funding hundreds, or
even thousands of students/scientists in less prominent schools who might go
on to make such discoveries themselves"

While it's plausible anyone can discover anything, the only rule of thumb
about finding great research is that great researchers generally train great
researchers - or, to put another way, it's likeliest to end up doing nobel
price worthy research by being trained by a nobel price winner.

The other thing is bad schools do not turn magically into good schools by
pooling money into them. Improving education requires human intervention by
experts - experienced teachers and so on. Money helps, but if you are sitting
on a 140 million dollars, you can't just donate it to some struggling place
and imagine it will transform it to a better institution. Or, pick random ten
laboratories that have done unremarkable research and imagine a grant of a 10
million dollars will improve the quality of their output.

I think the only rational choices to well spend such a sum of money is to
support established high performers, or, to proactively invest the money. If
proactive involvement is not what the donor wanted then I can't really fault
his decision to go with MIT. Or, well, if we follow the silly "nobel price
winners beget nobel price winners" rule of thumb and use nobel prices as
metric of research quality which itself is also silly, there would have been
other options:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation)

~~~
peter303
Mark Zuckerberg generously gave 100M to improve the education system of Camden
New Jersey. At the time the mayor was Stanford grad Cory Booker, now Senator,
and future Presidential material. Camden was and still is a minority shithole
of New Jersey. Neither Mark's generous gift nor Cory's public service had a
lasting effect. Deeper structural problems. I do not know the answer.

~~~
addicted
Except the gift was nothing but funding the charter school grift (don't get me
wrong, charter schools could work, and in some cases do work, but for the
large part, in the US, the charter school movement has pretty much entirely
been hijacked by union busters and people who want to profit off the
privatization of education).

~~~
HarryHirsch
Exactly. There are plenty of laboratory schools attached to universities,
where teaching research is done under the eyes of the public. Those are as a
rule doing well but Zuckerberg _chose_ to boost unaccountable charter schools.
Glad to see that it went as one would have predicted it to go.

------
myroon5
Full text:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced that it had
received a $140 million pledge from a graduate of the school—with no name, and
no strings attached.

An unrestricted gift of that size is rare in higher education, as donors often
want a say in how their dollars are spent. Unrestricted donations can be used
for things like facilities upkeep, as well as to pursue early-state scientific
research.

In the past, MIT has put unrestricted funds toward online learning and
Alzheimer’s research, as well as scholarships.

MIT said in a news release Wednesday that it would “invest in daring, high-
risk ideas; address some of the world’s most urgent challenges; and sustain
support for students, faculty, and the physical campus.”

MIT is in the second year of the public phase of its $5 billion fundraising
campaign, and has already brought in $3.4 billion. So far, roughly 20% of that
is unrestricted.

“No one has ever made it through life without someone else’s help. As a past
recipient of MIT’s generous financial aid, I benefited tremendously from the
opportunity to pursue my MIT education and am extremely appreciative of all
the ways that MIT has shaped me,” the anonymous donor said in a statement
shared by MIT. “I am blessed to be able to give back to the Institute so other
students can experience what I did, and so that the Institute can continue to
excel in groundbreaking achievements.”

The largest gift to MIT was pledged in 2000, when International Data Group
founder and chairman Patrick McGovern Jr. , and his wife Lore Harp McGovern,
committed $350 million over 20 years for a brain research institute.

~~~
vit05
>pledge from a graduate of the school

That is the most important part. He is saying: use that money to help others
like you helped me.

~~~
jdironman
In that he wasn't really financially able to attend MIT as most are. I feel
like he is saying, help those less fortunate.

~~~
runako
> financially able to attend MIT as most are

In fact, the vast majority of MIT undergraduates receive financial aid. About
a third of MIT undergraduates attend without paying tuition, and over half of
undergraduates receive a need-based scholarship (i.e. they are not rich).

[http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html](http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html)

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seibelj
Hey! Ya know what HN? It's fucking awesome that $140m was given to one of the
finest institutions in the entire world, rather than pissed away like so many
other fortunes. I'm sorry it didn't fit [insert pet issue that needs money].
More rich people should do this! And anonymously donated too! Feels good

~~~
wyldfire
I think it's definitely nice for philanthropists to give to institutions for
higher education. But I also think it's valuable to critically evaluate how
the money is spent because there's an opportunity cost to any expenditure.

Wouldn't it be nice if instead of being spent on a new academic facility, or
administrators' salaries, that it was instead used to offset tuition or
directly fund research?

~~~
cheriot
Are you suggesting the donor should have specified how the money is spent? 80%
of the money MIT has raised is restricted to specific uses, but the less sexy
things like salaries and office supplies are still required for the
organization to run.

~~~
ceejayoz
I think the suggestion is that MIT has more than enough money (and access to
money) and there are less well-funded institutions and causes where $140M
might move the needle more significantly.

~~~
bpchaps
I'd be curious if one of the unspoken goals is to make people outraged enough
by the donation to make donations to smaller institutions. Wishful thinking?

~~~
sillysaurus3
Outrage rarely matters.

Actually -- and I _really_ hesitate to mention this, but it seems sufficiently
intellectually interesting -- has anyone noticed that after the last election
cycle, outrage has ceased to matter altogether? United Airlines stock price is
up 12% despite their behavior, for example.

I'm not sure outrage has ever mattered much, but internet outrage in
particular has gone from "effective when focused" to "this is a normal day."
The rise of justice-porn subreddits has fueled this obsession. Everyone has a
grudge. In fact, they have multiple grudges categorized by computers and aimed
at faceless, nameless ideas.

I'm reminded of 1984. It's so cliche, but remember the "daily hate"? When did
we all start falling for this 24/7 outrage cycle?

It's made all the more dangerous by the fact that in nearly all of these
cases, the outrage is deserved. In fact, that's what makes it work at all.
Everyone's feelings _are_ valid, and the grudges _are_ justified. But what
kind of world is it when your grudges are handed to you? Aren't grudges
supposed to be personal? I'd rather not have them at all, but a personal
grudge is at least better than being told what to think.

~~~
adjkant
Ironically I think this comes from more awareness. I don't think people were
aware of how many problems there were in the world. Now anyone with the
internet can get informed on hundreds, most with no solution, a solution that
is blocked from being implemented, or one so complex that no one can agree on
said solution.

This article has a clear slant, but I think it has some serious merit for
health, awareness, and activism. Excuse the absolutely horrid title as well.

[https://thecoffeelicious.com/how-to-stayoutraged-without-
los...](https://thecoffeelicious.com/how-to-stayoutraged-without-losing-your-
mind-fc0c41aa68f3)

~~~
akvadrako
That's not awareness - awareness, aka mindfulness, is quite a neutral state.
I'd define it as recognising things for how they are.

What going on is more like the opposite - not accepting reality; instead
trying to fit the facts into an inconsistent (and hence imaginary) worldview.
This causes cognitive dissonance which leads to frustration. Outrage is one
way people cope with that frustration.

~~~
adjkant
1\. I would be careful to paint with that broad of a brush.

2\. Awareness can most certainly lead directly to frustration.

Some of it could be that, but there are plenty of issues where they are mostly
independent of worldview. The frustration comes from the solution that is not
yet known or cannot be implemented. Have that on dozens of big issues and
frustration is understandable.

~~~
akvadrako
If you're a Nihilist, no solutions are needed or even possible. That's just
one obvious counter-example, but in general there is nothing inherently
frustrating about any truth (or falsehood).

Frustration is "understandable" but that's because many people do have
worldviews that don't match up with reality.

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sharkjacobs
~1% of their 13 billion dollar endowment.

that's somehow both more and less significant than I had expected

~~~
rhaps0dy
Sounds like your expectation of the percentage (or of the total endowment)
used to follow a bimodal distribution.

Or that you expected the 1% to be higher and the 13 billion to be lower, which
is the same thing. (Or the reverse of this last thing.)

------
peter303
After I turned 50 the faculty and administration of MIT got real friendly
about alumni legacy grants. Before then they barely gave you the time of day.

------
nafizh
There is this perception(not invalid) that more research money should go to
the best schools because that would result in more impactful research. I,
myself don't quite disagree with that.

But one of the claims for this argument that a huge donation suddenly doesn't
turn a bad school into a good one is a strawman argument. Things don't have to
be so extreme. There are plenty of middle tier schools specially state schools
where amazing research is happening, and there are brilliant researchers who
can also make use of that money having huge impact on the world. These schools
already have very advanced infrastructure to utilize additional research
money.

But as a graduate student in a state school, I might be biased.

~~~
bachmeier
I agree with you. It is natural to think that this is a simple problem - give
money to the very best university and get the best research. Unfortunately,
like many things, it's not quite that simple.

Is there any reason to think that research at MIT has been limited by lack of
funding? That seems highly implausible to me. And if the answer is that MIT
could hire additional researchers to do more research with that money, those
researchers can do the same research with that money at many other schools.

It's not clear to me that giving the money to MIT will result in any more
research, and a good chance that it will result in less, because researchers
at other universities currently are limited by financial constraints.

------
durpleDrank
I'm sorry but I can't help but be reminded of this Curb Your Enthusiasm
episode
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049250/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049250/)

------
wavefunction
Carnegie at least funded libraries across the country, from New York City to
Podunk, USA.

~~~
apersona
How did you know that the donor didn't do the same?

~~~
wavefunction
As far as I can tell there is no wave of new libraries that would suggest such
an occurrence. Perhaps you want to point out some evidence I've missed?

Finally, I'll note that your post is a mis-inference of the point of my own.

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hprotagonist
That guy with 400 million in bitcoin?

~~~
sillysaurus3
Who has 148,000 BTC? Besides the FBI?

~~~
pdog
The Winklevoss twins. And, of course, the person or group known as Satoshi
Nakamoto.

~~~
avenoir
Satoshi is now worth, what, just under $3 billion. Insanity!

~~~
rtkwe
Unless he/she lost the keys to those wallets which is always a hilarious
recurring story.

I really wonder how many BTC are permanently tied into wallets that the owners
have lost the keys to.

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curiousDog
Probably Drew Houston of Dropbox ;)

~~~
eigenvalue
I had the same thought.

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jeddev
Does anyone have an account I could use to read this? Wall Street Journal are
seemingly trying to limit their audience by shrinking their online reach by
charging people to read their content.

I would much rather them show me some adverts at the side than have to pay to
read one article by them every month or so.

~~~
learntofly
[http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit...](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit-
gets-140-million-pledge-from-anonymous-donor-1496866275)

Credit: a HN news poster from a few months noticed that by prefixing:
[http://facebook.com/l.php?u=](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=) You can avoid the
paywall

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otsedom
This should be imitated all around the globe, in this way more research, new
jobs and a better society is possible. The National University of Engineering
(UNI) needs this such funds. For sure this money will return more Zuckerbergs,
Gates, Khan, Bose, OCW, EDX... to the world.

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nstj
Don't tell anyone but I'm pretty certain the donation was from Ted Danson.

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muninn_
They should instead give that money to the schools and organizations that need
it.

Nothing against MIT, but most kids don't go to MIT. They have a shitload of
money. Give it to a community college if you want more impact.

~~~
DuskStar
I'm going to have to disagree here - while this donation may be less impactful
to MIT than it would have been to XYZ Community College, the graduates and
research of MIT will probably have a far larger impact on the world than those
of XYZ. I'd expect a greater benefit from pushing the bleeding edge just that
little bit farther, if that makes any sense.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"XYZ Community College"

Another false dilemma between MIT and XYZ Community College. There's all sorts
of Universities and probably some community colleges with teams that are doing
great work with way, way less than _billions_ in funding. There's chances for
great impact if they likewise get the piles of money MIT has been using to do
great impact on top of brand name and connections. It will take time for the
smaller players to develop the latter but they can use the former immediately.

~~~
muninn_
It's just a suggestion. It very well could be that giving money to MIT is the
best thing to do.

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m-p-3
If you want to bypass the paywall, use this bookmarklet

    
    
      javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

~~~
hobarrera
Same paywall for me.

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iampoul
Wouldn't it be funny if it's Dolph Lundgren.

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cyphunk
Yay, now all students enrolled go for free! sike

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lgats
Read without a subscription [https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/mit-
gets-140-million-pledge...](https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/mit-
gets-140-million-pledge-from-anonymous-donor-1496866275)

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nickpsecurity
Great, an organization that's rich enough to waste money on piles of BS
research and toys gets a pledge of money instead of a cash-strapped one with
bright people that have lots of potential they can't act on.

~~~
daveed
There are plenty of people with the money who don't donate it at all. What's
the use of this?

~~~
nickpsecurity
I agree. It's why my original comment implied they should donate it to people
with potential to do good to great things with it that aren't receiving many
donations because they're not MIT or something. The MIT that already has over
_$10 billion_ endowment.

[http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2016/09/12/mits-13-2b...](http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2016/09/12/mits-13-2b-endowment-
generated-small-investment.html)

So, lets give MIT more money they don't need while smart people everywhere
else continue to get anywhere from less to near nothing depending on
institution or area.

