Imagine thinking bob dylan has your best interests at heart

(I’m watching ER and mourning)

What if the standard history of the last three decades of television had Julianna Margulies as a (the) central figure. This is so obviously correct it makes me despair that it is not even on the table.

I don’t know who to talk to about the thing where everyone is so stupid

I see. Thanks

Are future years of multi year awards paid for out of the current year agency budget? I thought that they were commitments of future budgets.

Good story otherwise!

I agree with this with the caveat that for many people "business as usual" means defying their supervisors and directives from agencies to continue doing work that is supposedly now prohibited; I think for a lot of people the default is to stop doing a lot of good things they were doing.

I just think the argument that (quasi-)endowments are only for the future is taking a side in a political disagreement about institutional priorities; it is not a neutral technocratic description. It's a reasonable position to hold, but it is often presented as a fact rather than a position.

the liquidity point is fair, but it is also fair to argue that universities should rebalance some of their holdings into more liquid assets. It is a mistake to think of endowments as a "rainy day fund," but it also would not be crazy for these orgs to use some of these assets as rainy day funds!

thank you!

Right, but the "has to" is usually designated by the board, rather than an external donor/contract. So it's not legally binding. It may be prudent! It definitely should not be spent to replace funding that the government should be providing. (It should be spent on students and employees 🙃)

it's always buried somewhere in their audited financial statements, either as "unrestricted" or "quasi endowment." I agree it's only 25% and does not solve this problem, and I also strongly agree that the feds need to fully fund research regardless of whether big universities should hoard less cash

I strongly believe this is a separate question from whether the feds should fully fund research--even if we should spend more of "endowments" on operating expenses, that is not any sort of argument for reducing government support for research and higher education. But we should still be accurate

it is just important that large portions of what many universities call "endowments" are in fact unrestricted, and it is fair for people to argue over how those funds are used. The story that endowments are restricted by donor agreements is only partially true, and it is misleading.

most big endowments have huge, often majority, components that are unrestricted

Also gifts that are restricted to "financial aid" pass through and become tuition, which is unrestricted general revenue. It is a nice way for fundraisers to raise effectively unrestricted revenues while still telling faculty/staff they can't spend the money bc it wld take from students