I remember vividly my suspense-filled trips to the mailbox outside the small house in Oregon where I lived with my mother in the spring of 1988 to find out where I’d been admitted to college. I have been thinking about those days a lot recently as I watch my 17-year-old daughter go through the college -application process.
For me, like for so many then and today, the question wasn’t just where I’d get in; it was where I could afford to go.
My dad had died suddenly when I was 14, with no life-insurance policy, a house worth the same as what he owed on the mortgage, and no material item more valuable than his 1964 Plymouth Valiant, which my older brothers sold for a few hundred bucks in a haze of shock a few weeks after his death. My mom’s job teaching at a private school paid very little.
Walking — or running, let’s be honest — to the mailbox after school when I was 18, I was keenly aware that financial aid would be a big part of the college-decision equation for me.
So I was thrilled that the schools to which I was admitted all offered generous aid packages.
Philanthropy made this aid possible and allowed me to choose to enroll at the institution I most wanted to attend. Perhaps this experience explains why I felt a sense of gratitude when reading about Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, intended to ensure the institution can consider applicants without regard to their financial need and meet the full need of all admitted students — forever.
I have often wished donors would give less to prestigious colleges with big endowments — which, after all, have tremendous resources — and more to the organizations working on the front lines of combating inequality. But, in this case, by ensuring that Johns Hopkins will admit students on the basis of merit rather than ability to pay, and by providing financial aid to those students, Bloomberg’s gift is meaningful. It counteracts the disturbing reality, documented by Stanford economist Raj Chetty, that too many selective, wealthy institutions today are actually perpetuating inequality.
“At dozens of America’s elite colleges, more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent of that scale — even though many of those lower-income students have the qualifications to get in,” Bloomberg notes in a New York Times op-ed discussing his gift.
Questioning Big Gifts
But no sooner had Bloomberg’s gift been announced than he was criticized. Writing in Vox, Dylan Matthews called Bloomberg’s gift a “wasted opportunity.”
“If you have Bloomberg-level wealth, the first question to ask is: Should I?” tweeted journalist Anand Giridharadas. “What went wrong in the society that allowed me to be paid so much when so many were paid so little? What was wrong with tax policy that let me keep so much when so many could’ve been helped by so little?”
Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, is a thoughtful critic, and, in fairness, he acknowledges that the Bloomberg gift “is better than many gifts in that it will, to some degree, redistribute power, not just money.”
His questions about the wealthy are important, especially as a growing number of thinkers and scholars ask whether big philanthropy is merely perpetuating an unequal status quo, protecting the interests of the givers themselves.
In some cases, that may be true.
But in my work at the Center for Effective Philanthropy advising many of the largest foundations in the world, that’s not what I generally observe. I see, to cite just a few examples, foundations that have contributed to significant strides in overhauling the criminal-justice system, donors who have supported profound gains in land conservation, givers who have helped improve access in specific communities to high-quality preschool, and foundations that have played a big role in securing greater civil rights for LGBTQ people.
This doesn’t seem like perpetuating the status quo to me. It is true that change has often come incrementally, and iteratively, in fits and starts, over many years. But that tends to be the way change happens.
Giridharadas seems to have a different view.
“Imagine donating $1.8 billion to the organizations and movements organizing around this country for free college for all. That would be donating to real system change,” Giridharadas argued on Twitter in response to Bloomberg’s gift. (Note: Giridharadas is speaking at CEP’s conference in Minneapolis in May.)
Perhaps.
Or perhaps, given the realities of the electorate and a massive federal deficit, free college for all is more likely to happen through the evolution of individual state and private institutions’ approaches, prodded by data-driven critics like Chetty and donors like Bloomberg, rather than through a top-down federal approach.
Many of the critics of philanthropy on the left seem to long for a kind of transformation of our national government that, however meritorious the vision, seems like a pipe dream. They reject the idea that individual givers should be seeking to address issues like access to college because they feel that’s the role the federal government should play. I am sympathetic to that argument, but it feels more theoretical than practical, at least today.
Better Than Hoarding Wealth
A just-released report from the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies raises alarms about what it calls “top-heavy philanthropy and its risks to the independent sector.” The report takes note of evidence of declining numbers of givers at small levels and an increase in giving among the ultrawealthy.
The apparent decline in the proportion of households contributing to charity is, indeed, worrisome. But it feels a little odd to critique donors for giving too much of their wealth away. A co-author of the report, Chuck Collins, said in a news release that gifts like Bloomberg’s “mask a very disturbing trend.” But wouldn’t we all be critiquing donors like Bloomberg if they were merely hoarding all their wealth and not seeking to give back? Wouldn’t that, in fact, be much more disturbing?
We can and should question and debate how givers are doing their giving as well as for what goals. It’s worth questioning, for instance, whether Bloomberg is asking enough of Johns Hopkins in terms of its use of existing funds to support financial aid.
I’m not suggesting we bow down to big givers. But the inclination to give should be encouraged and celebrated, not reflexively castigated as, I worry, it increasingly seems to be.
Among the Institute’s recommendations in its new report are to “restore steeply progressive income-tax rates” — and the authors specifically cite the 91 percent top tax rate that was in place under President Eisenhower. Whatever your views of a 91 percent top tax rate, this is the recommendation of those residing in a bubble. It has a zero percent chance of being taken seriously in Washington — even by most Democrats.
Given the tax policies put in place by our democratically elected politicians, for better or worse (and I’d argue largely worse), I, for one, am glad Bloomberg is seeking to use a good portion of his wealth to redistribute opportunity in this country, even if his approach is imperfect.
I hope others follow his lead, and if they’re going to give to their alma maters, that they do so in a way that prods those institutions to ensure access to college for all.
Phil Buchanan is president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a regular columnist for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and author of the forthcoming book, “Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count,” to be published by Public Affairs/ Hachette Book Group in April.
