I won't because they harassed my Mom way back for donations. English is not her strong suit and whatever frecken student was calling her was a total arse.

I give to my undergrad (McGill university). My post-grad school can suck my balls. It knows why.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

Indeed. Some of the admin bloat is more opaque, although I can understand a lot of it being driven by greater compliance & monitoring demands placed on the schools from outside (stuff like having a Title IX officer that didn't use to be its own fiefdom), but the OP's dig about tenured profs is way off from everything I've ever seen in higher Ed going back at least 20 years.

It's not really much different than any other large corporate entity replacing more senior full-time employees (i.e., higher salaried, plus benefits) w/ more part-time and/or contract workers; many of the tenured emeriti or voluntary departures either weren't replaced at all, or more likely the replacement level failed to keep up with overall enrollment growth in the department while the added teaching load was supplemented with more and more adjuncts & other limited-duration appointments, rather than hiring more tenure-track faculty. That chart captures is very well ~ the total # of faculty may have gone up a little (though less than keeping up w/ the pace of enrollment growth, so each student is effectively getting a smaller slice of the instructional pie), but a greater and greater % of it is getting paid at less than the full tenured rate.

Personally, where I witness more and more of it going is facilities... It's been covered in some of the other 'College Costs: WTF?' threads, but the old cramped & dingy dorms & shitty cafeteria swill of our day have been replaced by accommodations & meals that are nicer than I pay for at hotels & restaurants while traveling on a professional salary. No kidding, when I was in school in the 90s the locker room in the gym still had one giant communal shower bay w/ a single pair of bare hot/cold pipes running along the wall w/ a pair of valves & a shower head popping out every couple feet, and the 'lockers' were still those racks of metal baskets; lighting was a bare incandescent bulb with a wire cage protecting it, floors were all bare concrete, etc ~ all of which dated back to its original construction in the '50s. When they finally renovated it in the early 2000s, it seemed super posh w/ individual shower stalls, full lockers, nice tile, etc, etc... and all that was only good enough to last less than 10-12 years before they tore it all out and had to make it still nicer yet again to keep up w/ the arms race. I was still using the pool for my regular lap swim up to that point, but when they wanted to jack my Rec center alumni pass renewal up 50% that was it for me. All I wanted besides the lap pool was a locker & shower (ran outside on days I didn't swim, or occasionally did both); had zero use for all the extra indoor equipment, rock walls, juice bars, lounge areas, and on and on.

Maybe if they threw in some coed fluff girls to help count laps and caddy my towel & kickboard between sets I could stomach the extra expense...

I paid my alma mater for a service (my education), earned excellent grades, and I received a degree. Our financial relationship ended at that point in 1992.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

That's cool.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Nope. If I did, I'd probably do some sort of donation to the grad school.
I'm more into small local stuff where I feel it makes a bigger difference. That said, I appreciate people who donate very large sums of money to universities. I think I want to feel donations making a difference.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

I never give general donations to my school (a large public university), but I consider it when I know exactly what its going to be used for. The alumni association sometimes has specific things they are raising money for. I also sometimes donate to the club waterpolo team to help with travel expenses

I went to a top 5 public school with the largest endowment of a single public school. They don't need my money.
At least 3 generations of my family worked there. My paternal great-grandparents donated land that eventually became the optical school. They don't need anything else from me, except maybe my daughter's attendance in 7 years.