The Well-Endowed University: Philanthropy and Financialization in Higher Education

Abstract

Abstract: This paper offers a brief history of the ways in which finance capital and university endowments worked together to produce a fully financialized higher education system, one in which academic priorities are shaped by the imperative to raise funds in an arms war between research universities to promote their own rankings. This paper also provides an analysis of how post–Reagan era tax reforms shaped and strengthened universities as philanthropic, not-for-profit organizations that courted wealthy people for donations in order to bolster their endowments while allowing these donors to benefit from generous tax write-offs. The academic research priorities of prestigious contemporary American universities are driven by the need to increase donations both for targeted public-private partnerships and for financial speculations facilitated by the growth of endowments. An increasingly stratified system of higher education and an increasingly donor friendly institution, the contemporary university has also been indispensable in building the power of private equity in the post-industrial phase of contemporary capitalism.