In 2018, UC Berkeley’s endowment was valued at $4.3 billion. It’s not too late to learn not to allow others to take advantage of you.
Also, the endowment isn’t unlimited use. Most of it is earmarked for specific uses. When someone donates $500M to build a building, the money can only be used to maintain the building. When they endow a professorship, that money can only be used for that professors salary and research.
$4.3B is pretty small for a university the size of Berkeley.
Enough said. Tuition today is a hair below $40,000 for an in-state student* compared to a hair below $5,000 in the mid 90's. They can afford every penny.
: https://admissions.berkeley.edu/cost
*: https://www.dailycal.org/2014/12/22/history-uc-tuition-since...
It’s not nothing, but it’s also not super relevant.
Also in that same period, the UC system has lost more than 1/2 its state funding, hence the increase.
The school doesn’t really have any more to work with now than it used to, but has a lot more students since they are required to accept the top 2% of all California students.
$4.3 billion could pay four-year in-state cost of attendance for 36,000 undergraduates. Enrollment is 31,000. Only one graduating class would make it through before the institution shut down.
The UC system endowment's return last year was 8.2% [0], or $344 million. Its budget was $3 billion. In other words, its wealth can only sustainably fund 10% of its operations, in a good year.
[0] https://www.ucop.edu/investment-office/_files/report/annual-...
The money stops flowing some place, but no one can ever seem to point where. Individual departments are always severely strapped, so not likely there. Could be the university admins are just holding it in coffers and the individual departments only get small incremental increases relative to class sizes.
As a UC school, is it possible to get access to the books?