Higher education philanthropy: More like soccer or basketball?

Most people agree that higher education philanthropy is worthy of philanthropic support. In 2016, nearly half of all donations from the largest 50 donors in the United States went to colleges and universities. That same year, U.S. colleges and universities accepted $41 billion in contributions.

In early 2015, higher education endowments totaled more than $535 billion, with the top 120 schools holding 75 percent of that sum.

Some schools – including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, the University of Texas and Princeton – have endowments of more than $20 billion apiece. This is larger than the gross domestic products of many countries.

In certain sports, according to Gladwell, weaker players hurt a team’s chances of winning more than stronger players help. In soccer, for example, there are fewer chances to score – so mistakes by weaker players have a proportionally higher impact. In basketball, there are many chances to score – and one superstar player can often make up for the weak links on the team. Soccer is a “weak-link” game and basketball is a “strong-link” game.

Gladwell says, “American society is really soccer. We’re so independent and we need so many perfect passes to score a goal, that our challenge is our weak link, not our strong link. What matters is how good our eleventh player is, not our first.” Further, he says that the United States today “does not suffer from an excessive egalitarianism; it suffers from the opposite problem. Its strong links have never been stronger.”

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