Re:Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh end use of lega...
by LegitShady on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @01:07PM
(#36789740)
Those are all decisions the university leadership made. David Tepper (?) doesn't run the school - the university leadership decided to make those decisions to get the money. They could have said "this isn't sustainable", and their hands weren't tied.
"Your $100m gift will cost us $200m, we can't accept it as currently stipulated".
All university leadership decisions that they failed on.
Re:Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh end use of lega...
by tough on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @01:21PM
(#36789939)
yeah way easier to blame the donor for his pesky asks
Re:Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh end use of lega...
by pc86 on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @01:47PM
(#36790370)
What risk in there in pissing off the donor if the donor's gifts all cost you at least that much? If someone offers me $100 million but conditions it on me spending $101 million, it doesn't really matter how upset they get with me because I was never going to come out ahead in that deal anyway.
Not (always) true. Direct example with Carnegie Mellon - David Tepper was upset the business school (his alma mater) was appearing to fall behind in recruiting, so he donated ~100m but tied it to the business school getting a new building/quad. Total cost to the university was well north of 200mil; and their hands were functionally tied in how it was spent.
Yes, I know this is an outlier and yes, university leadership could have said no - but you're risking pissing off a doner who's given 100m+ over the years and will likely continue giving (and you know Tepper will continue guiding further capital expenditures as he sees the need).