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Have you gotten a call from your school's alumni office and wondered how they've tracked you down, even if this is the third illegal sublet you've been living in? The NY Times sheds some light on NYU's efforts, which have grown much more sophisticated in the past few years, especially now as they try to raise $2.5 billion for their endowment. NYU's $2.5 billion goal, breaks down to about $1 million a day and is not as big as the $4 billion endowment drives that Cornell, Stanford and Columbia are on, but it's pretty aggressive. Here's how NYU President John Sexton sells the school:
What's also fascinating is how NYU fund-raising office employees not only use electronic screening companies to dig information about alumni, but they also scour through media sources to look for "names of alumni, parents of alumni or parents of students"!N.Y.U. is historically not a wealthy school compared with its elite competitors — it has more than 40,000 students and an endowment of about $1.6 billion.
As N.Y.U.’s storyteller in chief, Dr. Sexton consistently hits on certain themes: N.Y.U. is a scrappy underdog, making up for its lack of endowment with moxie and with its appealing home in New York City.
Do you donate to your alma mater? Or are the loans you've repaid/repaying enough for now?
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hmm... sorry, i am still trying to pay off my student loans.
Never would find me sending any money to my alma mater.
screw them.
I went to William & Mary (a state school) for undergrad, and NYU for grad school.
W&M was well-run and treated me like an individual the entire time I was there.
NYU (which cost 4 times as much for a year of school) was a huge bureaucracy that screwed up my financial aid repeatedly and made me feel like a number rather than a person.
So when the time came for me to start giving back to my alma maters, the choice was easy: W&M gets all my college donations - NYU gets NONE.
Blech! NYU, a real estate company disguised as a "private university in the public service". Not until John Sexton gets a pay cut, will I ever donate to this crap of a university. If I can turn back time (okay, I'll admit, I have Cher on my playlist), I would rather have gone to Baruch and save myself a hefty sum and not be swimming in perpetual debt from my student loans.
The schools with the lowest endowments relative to the amount of students attending rely on the students for most of their financial backing. Grants and the interest they receive from their investments can only go so far. Harvard has a $30 Billion plus endowment and because of their investments most of their students don’t pay full price for their education, only a fraction.
I went to a school who has a less then average endowment and as a result are raising the tuition to NYU levels. (Well, you can blame mismanagement too for that as well) The more money they have in the bank the less they have to lean on the students.
Gwin, I hear you 100%, and was just about to make a similar comment, as I myself am an undergrad at WM.
We're a tiny state school with embarrasingly little money, and yet, somehow, our tuition remains relatively low, and our rankings remain high (outranking NYU with an endowment less than a third of the size of NYU's)
Talking with my friends who attend NYU and other similar institutions (ie. any of the Ivies), I can't get over the level of waste and excess that seems to go on there. To me, it seems like some sort of ploy to attract wealthier students, and cut out the middle-classes completely (if you don't believe me, take a look at NYU's tuition costs. They're staggering). Looking at the high-profile professors and first-class buildings NYU's putting up, I would say they've got quite enough money as it is.
Harvard's sitting on an endowment the size of the GDP of a small country.
Virginia may be backward on a number of issues, but their public education system is second to none on the east coast.
It's strange to me that this is a story at all. I used to work in fundraising for schools--much smaller than NYU-- and it is pretty standard to do extensive research on prospective big donors. Everyone does it.
Of course, as a soon-to-be alumna of NYU, I'm not giving any money to them until I pay off my student loans... which should be a long, long while...
I'll donate to NYU once they stop treating veterans and ROTC students like second class citizens. When I was a Cadet while at NYU I was constantly harassed, discriminated against, and hampered from my efforts to become a military officer - by faculty and administrators alike. They won't get a dime of my money until they change their policies towards the men and women who serve in the military.
NYU outsources their alumni fundraising - it's done by a separate company who employs students as telemarketers. It's really nothing novel and is done at hundreds of the major schools across the US.
these days, people are paying for a piece of paper rather than an education.
i think the days of donating to your school are over. the more bureaucratic these schools become, the less people are going to want to give.