What can the endowment do for us? The Berea college example.

UBC Student Senator Alfie Lee posted this New York Times article on facebook a few days ago. I think it’s worth thinking pretty hard about. Berea College, which outwardly looks like a typical New England private school, uses it’s 1.1 billion dollar endowment for students. From the Berea website:/

Berea continues to build upon a distinctive history of 150 years of learning, labor and service, and find new ways to apply our mission (the Great Commitments) to contemporary times by promoting kinship among all people, serving communities in Appalachia and beyond and living sustainably to conserve limited natural resources….
Berea continues to build upon a distinctive history of 150 years of learning, labor and service, and find new ways to apply our mission (the Great Commitments) to contemporary times by promoting kinship among all people, serving communities in Appalachia and beyond and living sustainably to conserve limited natural resources

Now true, this college is different from UBC in a lot of ways. It’s much smaller, not a research institution, has a bigger endowment (UBC’s is about 700 million) and only accepts low-income students. Students work 10 hours a week on campus and pay no tuition. Food comes from the on-campus farm, furniture in the workshops, and crafts are produced for sale. Still though, this school is an example of what it looks like to actually live up to the high aspirations of lofty mission statements (like UBC’s Trek 2010), and using an endowment fund for this purpose. UBC’s endowment fund definitely has potential benefits to students and research. But the debates about how much to use now, how much to save, and to what lengths to go to enrich the endowment (by leasing out our land for development, for instance) are hugely important.