
Plutocrat donors are shaping the agenda at elite universities - hhs
https://www.ft.com/content/a620df08-926a-11e9-aea1-2b1d33ac3271
======
motohagiography
There is an old joke about on what shade of pink the FT is printed, where
officially it is called "salmon," but more privately readers call it,
"parlour."

As a former subscriber, this article is about the quality you can expect since
the death or retirement of a number of their great writers. Gillian Tett keeps
the whole thing afloat as the rest of their staff writers haven't written
anything brave or challenging in almost a decade.

I don't mind that donors are putting riders on their "gifts," because funding
a chair in something niche is how the system always worked. It is also a
bulwark against populism from both sides and against political expediency and
revolutionary zeal. The university system used to be for an elite so tiny it
didn't matter, where now it's the gatekeeper institution to the middle class,
almost like the way mandatory military service for citizenship was, but for a
managerial society. Imposing fashionable ideas on the whole system as a means
to undermine any foundation for opposition to them is cynical and dishonest.

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malvosenior
_Tech entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox objected to the Oxford gift on Twitter this
week, saying that the money should be used for climate crisis work. “Something
is broken with these models of philanthropy,” she told me. “The greatest
challenge of our time is whether we will have a planet in a decade. That’s
where we have got to be focusing our attention.”_

First of all, does anyone actually believe that we won't have a planet in a
decade? That type of hyperbole doesn't seem at place in an FT article.

Secondly, who's to say that the £150m donated to Oxford university won't help
climate change? We need scientists, administrators and many other roles to
accomplish _anything_. Oxford seems like a pretty decent place for such people
to get their education.

~~~
pmyteh
This gift is earmarked for the humanities, so it certainly won't train
scientists. And quite a chunk of it is going on a new building, which will pay
off in decades to come, if at all.

I work at Oxford, but I'm really quite unsure that this is the most effective
use of £150m. Suffice to day that my own charitable contributions aren't to my
employer...

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Nasrudith
Shouldn't elite universities already be independent? The Ivy Leagues for
instance have stupidly large endowment funds for one for that exact purpose!
They don't seem to be using them in "burn happy" ways either like free tuition
to all or funding large ammounts into their own research funding.

It could be pathological greed of getting more than they have ability or
desire to spend - particularly if it is their job to gain more.

It would make sense for connections to be worth more than mere money per say
and the donations are proxies/symbolic.

That is putting aside suspicion agendas against universities that have existed
since students protested the war.

~~~
mobilefriendly
Most of the Ivies and Duke and Stanford have free tuition for middle class and
lower income students.

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dmix
[http://archive.is/Y9oBx](http://archive.is/Y9oBx)

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Eliezer
We must meet very different plutocrats, that's all I can say.

~~~
qntty
Explain?

~~~
Eliezer
The plutocrats I have met tend to be alarmed about the decline of classical
liberalism in universities; they don't sound like they think they could easily
purchase agenda-setting power through simple donations.

~~~
syn0byte
Crocodile tears and false modesty? You don't keep your plutocratic station
long if you run around telling everyone you hate cheap education because it
gives the proles dreadful ideas like "fair wages" and "rights". Nor that you
plan to spend a bunch of money to fix the problem of these educated uppity
proles.

~~~
challenger22
This is mostly as a reply to Eliezer Yudkowsky-

I've been in the rationalist community for quite a while, this is the first
time I've noticed you here on HN. It is really funny to observe how much
people want to argue against you when you condense your point down into a
terse statement. Looking through your past comments, it is a very common
pattern of behavior.

syn0byte- the man you are replying to is fairly well-connected. I would take
the words he said as a credible anecdote- he hangs out with plutocrats enough
to know what he said.

~~~
Eliezer
Very, very particular plutocrats. I'm reasonably sure they're not
representative... but still, they have money, and didn't seem to think it
could be used to purchase university-agenda.

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qntty
No paywall: [http://archive.is/y5cR3](http://archive.is/y5cR3)

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JackFr
What a absolutely terrible article. There is little information and less
cogent argument.

This is "Community Shopper" level journalism (except for the opening line,
"When I was at Harvard...")

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mLuby
Why does the article link say (google.com) when it's from the Financial Times
(ft.com)?

~~~
nz
It is a way to circumvent the paywall.

~~~
joker3
Doesn't work.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Yeah, it just takes me straight to the paywall.

~~~
ceejayoz
I'm able to read it if I open the HN "web" link in a new private window and
click through there.

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ceejayoz
This sort of thing has been going on for a while.

[https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/koch-
foundation...](https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/koch-foundation-
proposal-to-college-teach-our-curriculum-get-millions/)

> In 2007, when the Charles Koch Foundation considered giving millions of
> dollars to Florida State University’s economics department, the offer came
> with strings attached.

> First, the curriculum it funded must align with the libertarian,
> deregulatory economic philosophy of Charles Koch, the billionaire
> industrialist and Republican political bankroller.

> Second, the Charles Koch Foundation would at least partially control which
> faculty members Florida State University hired.

> And third, Bruce Benson, a prominent libertarian economic theorist and
> Florida State University economics department chairman, must stay on another
> three years as department chairman — even though he told his wife he’d step
> down in 2009 after one three-year term.

~~~
malvosenior
Isn't more libertarian influence on universities a positive thing? They are
currently deeply, deeply influenced by the far left. Getting more diversity of
thought seems like a win for everyone.

~~~
javert
The "good" universities in the US are very much postmodern left institutions.
The Koch money barely moves the needle at all.

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akhilcacharya
If this is a concern, the best solution to me is to limit the influence of
elite institutions. If billionaires want to throw money to build monuments to
themselves, why stop them?

