More seriously, endowments are for specific purposes specified by the donor. Most of the time, this money cannot be spent on anything else, regardless of "need."
They should do it! Desptite centuries of archaeological research we still don't really know how the pyramids were built. A real world test of the various possible techniques would answer a lot of questions. Plus when they're finished maybe the Goa'uld will show up to resolve the SETI issue.
Given the size of university endowments, and the enormous tuitions, this sounds like misaligned incentives rather than paucity.