this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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The record-breaking donation came from a 93-year-old former professor, who is the widow of a wealthy investor.

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[–] Grimy 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So that would be 200 schools if we liquidated one really annoying billionaire. Just sayin

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Expropriate or bust!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

At $60K tuition x 500 students = $30M / yr. Simple interest on $1B at 3% per year over 20 years = $30M / yr.

They can pay for 500 medical students, practically forever, without touching the principal.

According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein_College_of_Medicine, in 2021, they matriculated 183 students (out of 9773 applicants). That means they can double the number of 'free tuition' students and the endowment will still keep growing.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

how to be a good billionaire: give it all away at the first opportunity

no idea how much she has left, but i imagine it's still plenty to live on

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

how to be a good billionaire

No such thing. You cannot get to that point without trampling all over and exploiting others.

give it all away at the first opportunity

Similarly, a person who would do this wouldn't hoard enough to qualify in the first place

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If you read the summary, she didn't hoard it. Her husband did, and she gave it away pretty much immediately after he died.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

yeah fair. it seems like she got the money from her husband, but still. getting that money in the first place is inherently unethical

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It takes far less money than a billion dollars be able to make world-changing charitable donations. You could, say, fund a light rail system (yes, even in a decently-sized city) or housing for every homeless person in your home town for vastly less than that.

There's only so much you can invest in yourself and your personal hobbies before there is nothing more you can realistically buy. Any normal, reasonable person, once already confronted with a luxurious lifestyle for themselves and their loves ones that will last forever, looks at all their extra money and decides it would make them feel good to make those world-changing charitable donations. And so they do it.

I'm sure everyone's point of balancing anxiety and lifestyle is different... but any reasonable person, it's WAY before they hit a billion.

In short: a normal person starts wildly giving away their wealth long before they become a billionaire. You have to be some kind of antisocial weirdo not to.

[–] khaliso 10 points 9 months ago

Is there a lemmy version of r/OrphanCrushingMachine ?

[–] RememberTheApollo 6 points 9 months ago (3 children)

But textbooks are still $1,500 and there are $50k in fees.

/s. Sorta.

It’s a great gift, but tuition isn’t the only expense.

[–] Voyajer 3 points 9 months ago

Hopefully PDFs of medical textbooks are as easy to find as they are for engineering textbooks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

With a huge pot of money infinitely annuitized like this, they could literally be paying their students to attend.

Maybe that's the next frontier. Hopefully. It's definitely the best way to ensure access to education for the poor.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

How dare they solve one problem but not all problems.

[–] RememberTheApollo 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

They didn’t “solve” anything. It’s a private medical school with a sub 2% acceptance rate. The kind of people who are going to be attending a school like this are already likely to be far better off than most as many will have accomplished pre-med courses and extracurricular activities to stand out as well as have had financial, scholastic, and other support to have the grades necessary to have a shot at being accepted at such a school.

IOW, exclusive school will likely mostly admit students from families wealthy enough to afford the best education and prep likely to be offered a slot at an exclusive school.

The only thing I’ll grant is that people who do get to this school will have less debt if they are of lesser financial means.

Nothing was “solved”.

E: further thought: this “gift” is giving other mostly well off people a price break. If a lower income family with a student is at this school it’s probably the exception to the rule of who benefits from this gift.

[–] LemmyIsFantastic 2 points 9 months ago

95% of this will be going to the upper middle class.