You're making common mistakes that people make when talking about school finances. Schools pay for sports because they drive alumni interaction and therefore donation rates, and they therefore have a higher than 1-1 rate of return. They have the unnecessary construction projects because the funds are earmarked for said construction. If I give you, a school, $X million, on the condition that you build a new student hall with my name on it, will you turn that down?

If it is a taxpayer funded institution, then it should be turned down. Donations should be anonymous, otherwise I assume the donor is wanting and getting something in return (nepotism, brand name, hubris), and that doesn't belong in taxpayer funded arenas, even street names and parks and whatnot.

I don’t think anyone wants to receive hubris in return. Not that a university is in a position to offer it.

There's a reason that people want their name on a donation. If it was truly selfless, it would be anonymous. Here's an example:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/style/stephen-schwarzman-...

I guess I don't get your point? So what? Really not trying to be rude, just curious why this matters.

Oh I see your post earlier - yeah, I think removing incentives from voluntary contributions to (partially) taxpayer funded events would lead to a major increase in inefficiency of those projects seeing the light of day.

If I offer you $1200, on the condition that you spend that money on a 36 hour trip to Hong Kong and back, will you turn that down?

I assume so. So there has to be some other force at play, unless the university admins are just maximizing revenue in a brain-dead fashion.

The analogy isn't a good one, as you get no value out of the trip to Hong Kong in your scenario.

A more relevant analogy is if I offered you $1,200 on the condition you spend that money on a home gym. Could you have other uses for the money? Sure. Could you have higher priorities than exercise? Sure.

Are you going to turn that down? Probably not.

An even more appropriate analogy is if I offered you $2,500, but $1,200 had to be spent on a home gym. The remainder has no conditions. That would be closer to what a lot of big donations are structured as.

You're leaving out aspects of that analogy. You left out the part where you incur the added cost of electricity, or your current home isn't big enough so you need to move to a new area with higher property taxes and insurance costs. Or maybe you're renting the home to someone and force them to get a new gym in exchange for higher rent. The point is, who actually benefits from the donation; the fancy pants administrators and donators or the actual students who'd probably prefer lower tuition and better quality instruction? Somehow, big donations never seem to translate to the the obvious benefit of affordability and accomplishing the actual goal of providing a good education to people.