Learn from compassionate liberals for only $50,000 per year

Here’s a story to keep in mind the next time you are hit up for your alma mater’s annual fundraising drive. This morning the Boston Globe reports that the number of colleges in the Boston area that charge over $50,000 in tuition, room, board, and mandatory fees is expected to double in the 2010-2011 this year.

Tufts, Boston University, Boston College, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Babson reached the $50,000 milestone in 2009-2010. Next fall they’ll be joined by Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, Brandeis, Brown, Dartmouth, and Holy Cross. And this is not just a northeastern phenomenon – according to a story published last November in the Chronicle of Higher Education, schools all over the country charge at least $50,000 per year, including Georgetown, George Washington, Vanderbilt, Carnegie Mellon, Tulane and University of Southern California — 58 schools in all. In the 2008-2009 school year the number was 5.

Many of these schools no doubt have generous financial aid programs to lower the cost for some students. But these elite institutions pride themselves on being impeccably liberal, more compassionate, kinder, and gentler than for-profit corporations, who are assumed to be rapaciously money-grubbing. And yet these educators have no problem raising their prices more quickly and to a greater extent than IBM or Apple or AT&T would ever dream.

What makes this all the more galling is that these universities have some of the largest endowments in the country. And this is even after those endowments took a big hit in the recession, in one case (Harvard) as large as 30%. (The decreases were due in part to the colleges’ reckless investment strategies, which were similar to the ones for which private investment firms have been excoriated). In other words, while their tuition goes through the roof, these schools are sitting on a heck of a lot of cash.

Here are endowments of some of the $50k schools as of the end of FY 2009, ranked according to a 2010 study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

1. Harvard $25.7 billion

4. M.I.T. $8 billion

8. Columbia $5.9 billion

9. Northwestern $5.4 billion

11. U of Chicago $5.1 billion

17. Washington University in St. Louis $4 billion

18. Cornell $4 billion

21. Vanderbilt, $2.8 billion

22. Dartmouth $2.8 billion

23. U.S.C. $2.7 billion

24. N.Y.U $2.1 billion

26. Brown $2 billion

40. Boston College $1.34 billion

44. Wellesley $1.26 billion

49. Tufts $1.1 billion

50. Smith $1.1 billion

65. Boston University $892 million

Which raises the question: why give your charitable donation to a wealthy university, when there are so many worthy organizations that are in much greater need?

(via Newsalert and Instapundit)