For my family member the salary isn’t huge, I think like $40k so the whole department is probably less than $500k/year including overhead and whatnot. My assumption was if they are spending stupid money on this they are likely spending stupid money on many other things.

$500k/yr spent on fundraising does not remotely sound like a stupid use of money to me?

It’s stupid because there are no alumni donations for this school. They are nowhere near breaking even and won’t because there just aren’t many alumni.

The problem is that these aren’t efficient dollars anyway. Spending $500k to net $500k is not a good return. Schools should focus on better returns, like teaching and research.

That depends on what the ROI is.