Rich university getting richer

I wonder what good a $400 million gift for an engineering school might have done. Perhaps it might have helped found a school of engineering at a new university in East Africa to help lift a population out of poverty. Or it might have funded efforts to support women in engineering, especially since that field is drastically underpopulated by women. Alternatively, it might have gone to a university in Central or South America, since that part of the world does not have a representative among the best engineering programs in the world.

There are many ways one of the largest monetary donations ever made to a university might have served under-resourced populations. Instead, it went to the richest university in the world.

Update 6/10/15: The Chronicle of Higher Education weighs in on this matter. $400 million could pay tuition for an entire college’s students for a decade; it could create new buildings; enhance many needed fundraising campaigns; cover thousands of professors salaries; help cure a disease; save higher education in Wisconsin.