Should You Give To Harvard?

Posted by Liyun Jin on September 29, 2009 at 3:56 pm

Donating to Harvard could get you 1.) your name stamped on a building, 2.) called unethical by NYTs Randy Cohen.

Donating to Harvard could get you 1.) your name stamped on a building, 2.) called unethical by NYT's Randy Cohen.

NYT’s Randy Cohen thinks not. In fact, he thinks it’s downright morally reprehensible:

Do not donate to Harvard. To do so is to offer more pie to a portly fellow while the gaunt and hungry press their faces to the window (at some sort of metaphoric college cafeteria, anyway).

Noice would like to point out that to give to Harvard might, at this point, be to offer some piping hot breakfast pie to students who don’t have it. But anyways. Cohen’s evidence why Harvard isn’t worthy of your charity? Our endowment, while down 27 percent, still exceeds the GDP of Estonia. Our alumni are still money-mongers, with 40 percent of the class of 2008 going into banking. And the median base salary for the B-school’s class of 2009 is $115,000.

Under the current circumstances, the more honorable course is to write that check to a community college or a historically black college or a small Catholic college or other modest institution that genuinely and profoundly transforms the lives of its graduates.

Anyways, argue what side you will. The jewel of the piece is the hilarious comments that ensued:

Someone named Park called it a “very obnoxious, polemical article by someone who obviously has an anti-Harvard bias” and then went on to slap Cohen around some more:

Obviously, this writer is trying to draw a crowd to his article by name-dropping Harvard. Perhaps it is time to get over how you didn’t get in when you applied, eh?

Eek, that was perhaps a bit uncalled for. But for most of us, our reaction is probably this:

I give to Harvard. It’s called “tuition”. I give til it hurts.

Wise, wise words.

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