Tuesday, January 8, 2019


January 08, 2019 Tuesday

Bedtime Story 


The Endowments of Ivy Leagues


That is the kind of money it takes to run a world-class institution (as explained sufficiently vividly in the last night’s bedtime story).

Both education and fundamental research have now become a very expensive stuff.

The financial endowment of the Brown University, also one of Ivy League Universities, albeit a largely unknown one, was a meager 3.5 billion for the year of 2017.

It is not an insignificant amount compared to most universities of the world.

Yet it takes serious money for a university to live up to its commitment and mission of teaching, learning and serious research.

In comparison with Harvard, the financial endowment of Yale was 27.8 billion for the year of 2017 and for Princeton it was 23.8 billion for the same year.

Stanford University which is also a highly reputed university and NOT among of the Ivy League universities was endowed with 24.8 billion for the same year of which almost 75% of which were contributed by private donors bookmarked for very specific purposes.

In fact the endowment is so much that Stanford in 1991 established the Stanford Management Company to handle its financial and real estate’s assets.

A Board of Directors has been established who are appointed by Stanford’s board of trustees to handle the affairs of the Stanford Management Company and presumably to see that no fraud is taking place.

Of the 24.8 billion that Stanford got in its endowment in the year 1.13 billion of it came through philanthropic gifts through contributions of more than 76,000 donors.                       

The amount of money that flows into Ivy League may not shock you if you were to know that of the 44 men who have served as the Presidents of the United States 16 of them (nearly 36%) of them have graduated from the Ivy League Universities.

Men such as these are hugely charismatic and highly influential in generating public trust and sympathy and thereby attracting wealth towards themselves.

Yes, it may surprise you that President Donald trump is among these sixteen having graduated from the Wharton school of the University of Pennsylvania.

Wharton School as you might have guessed is the business school of the university that offers Bachelor of Science degree in economics at the undergraduate level, Masters of Business Administration at the post graduate level besides a doctoral program.

Wharton’s MBA programmed is ranked very highly in the United States; Forbes ranked it as number one for the year of 2019.

So the homeopath critic and medical reformed Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior was a product of one such Ivy League university namely Harvard and served as a professor in another namely Dartmouth.   

It was in 1836 that he was awarded the Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
                              
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
                           
  
                

             












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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:


All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:


For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:



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