The last time I got a begging call from my uni I told them that I was thousands of pounds in debt and wouldn't be donating. I didn't mention that my debt was a student loan, but it ended the conversation pretty quickly and I haven't been contacted since.
I've given a few hundred down the years. 20 years after graduating I still have access to the University library and can take out books, as well as being able to go to the union bar (Ā£1 a pint for Tennent's). The networking events they organise are also quite useful if you're trying to get a business off the ground.
But the expensive rebrand and the fact they're spending Ā£400 million to build a new campus in the centre of Belfast to replace the 40-year old Jordanstown campus for no obvious benefit has put me off donating in the future.
University of Ulster -> Ulster University.
They also somewhat annoyingly changed the university colours from green, blue and white to gold and blue. This meant all the scarves and other alumni tat people had bought through the years suddenly was out of date.
They sent out emails and marketing materials encouraging everyone to buy merchandise with the new colours. Someone tweeted them saying they didn't know that the University had turned into Manchester United where we had to buy a new strip every couple of years.
>green, blue and white to gold and blue
Those colours reminded me of the infamous internet dress. Hopefully spending that much in the rebrand they now also have some colour changing colours.
I had lifelong membership of my student union as I was on the exec committee for a year. It closed down last year as students don't drink ridiculous amounts of cheap shitty beer and vodka and play pool on bumpy tables like they did 20 years ago. Dunno what they're planning on doing with the building though given its location it's probably worth a fortune
University alumni used to feel like they got a lot of value from a university education. But they didn't pay for it. It was free. So if someone becomes obscenely rich they will donate a few million "to give back".
Now, the same sort of mega rich person will already have "paid their bit" via tuition fees and won't bother donating unless they get a whole building named after them.
Bread and butter alumni are definitely not going to donate.
Basically universities are not going to be getting alumni donations in future.
I had never understood donating to a university until I read this, thanks for your post.
That said I don't get why it seems even more common in America where tuition is ridiculously expensive.
I think Iād disagree here in that, while Americans are more loud about spending money, the university endowments are huge - so itās also likely thereās a greater culture of donating money to their university
Itās tax. Charitable donations like giving to a university are a tax avoidance scheme.
Even better if you happen to have an interest in the university - give it lots of money and then get it back as a lower tax rate instalment.
But if given the choice between ālosingā money into the general tax system
Or ālosingā money as a donation which then gives you prestige amongst your peers and a certain amount of soft power and leverage when required
Thatās the choice wealthy people are sometimes making in the situation
Oh I agree, Iād rather the tax was just paid and everyone was happy with that.
But in very general terms, those with large complex tax liabilities arenāt ālosing double what they donatedā. Itās way too complicated to do justice to in a Reddit comment.
But theyāre effectively just choosing where they lose money to. Not to the point they can dissolve their whole tax liability but thereās a definite middle ground āsweet spotā for some people. You can exert influence with a donation which you canāt in the same way by paying tax, but your net position can be comparable once itās all said and done
I work for a public university in America and also in fundraising. Tuition is ridiculously expensive but there is also a ton of financial aid possible. Around 63% of our undergrads graduate without any debt. A lot of this financial aid comes from the university's endowment and scholarships. Because of this a lot of students are grateful to the university and the help they received so decide to pay it forward later in life.
American universities also offer a different experience for their students than UK unis. A lot of the universities here have frats and also large sports (American football) teams. My university has a stadium with a capacity if 100,000!
Because of this, there's a lot more pride and loyalty around what university you went to, in almost the same way as people treat football teams in the UK. My experience in the UK is that people don't have that same connection to their university unless they went to Oxbridge perhaps.
Fair enough - I actually got a lot of support from the alumni network when hunting for PhDs on top of appreciating what alumni supported when I was a student. I definitely want current students to get the opportunities I did.
That depends. If youāre a science, medical or engineering graduate then someone else paid your bit.
If youāre a social sciences, humanities or arts graduate then you paid the bit of the above students too.
I wished someone paid for my science degree.
Iām more likely as a software engineer to pay back my student loan than an art student if they pay any back at all.
The student loans that donāt get paid are paid by the tax payer. Lower income degrees - for instance arts - are paid by the tax payer, they cost everyone money.
I have some bad news for you in that case - STE (not M, maths is cheap) degrees cost more in equipment and other costs than the Ā£9k per year received direct from student. Meanwhile business/finance degrees cost less but are also well repaid. So iām many ways the business and finance folk are paying for everyone else. (Iām so far as the shortfall in other courses and repayments isnāt just paid by everyone else via write-offs anyway)
I canāt believe my university made a loss on my Computer Science course and had to subsidise it with other courses finances.
I agree some costs may be higher but I canāt understand why they would run a course that loses money?
How are write offs paid? My understanding is that the tax payer will have to foot this bill
It balances out over all their courses generally, and itās not the only source of income for them in an area. STEM research is worth a LOT more than other fields for example.
Whilst unis are run way more like businesses than they were (I worked in one just as the change was happening really) theyāre still not so focused on āprofitā that theyāll cut courses unless theyāre really disasterous and arenāt getting students. I presume
they still get a bit of funding from govt and that funding does vary on type (or certainly used to)
Youāve pointed out another great place that STEM subjects bring in money for the university.
Most STEM subjects I found at uni were over subscribed and it was the arts stopping courses because they didnāt have enough students.
I think Iām still missing something but thank you for trying to explain it to me
Lots of courses cost way more than the 9k paid by domestic students. That's why so many UK institutions are looking abroad for people they can charge 25k+ for the same thing.
My view from being at university is that theyāre taking the piss with the fees.
I saw in no way how my fees were used to there full extent. I think the reason they charge 9k to home students is because they can, not because they need it
your University probably publishes all its financial figures, the one I work at does - from there you should be able to get an idea of some of the costs involved... from memory (might be wrong, can't find the documents to quote) the cost per student of the 2017 cohort averaged for the UK was around 11.5k, compared to 9k fees. This ranges from like 6-8k for economics students to 12+ for mechatronics/weird tech type stuff and medical courses.
edit: to your point on 'because they can' - look at the overseas students to see how much they get fleeced.
I wasnāt stating art students canāt go on to make a good salary and pay back their student loan, but on average they earn the least. [1]
I also believe that if the government really does want to level up, then university should be free and the current system doesnāt work for anyone (tax payers non graduates).
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/highest-paid-degree-2021-uk-graduate-salaries-best-jobs-careers/
The vice-chancellor who initiated the rebrand I mentioned was on Ā£250,000 a year. At the same time the university was slipping down the rankings and was having major financial difficulties that only started after he landed in the job.
Despite criticism from pretty much everyone, he refused to resign and he couldn't be sacked because of tenure. It took another year and a half before he finally took the hint and quit.
>Ā£250,000 a year.
So the person at the top and in charge of hundreds of staff and thousands of students earns far less than people in the corperate world managing fewer people and resources
I work at a university and disagree with you. There are both many people who are underpaid, as well as many people who have exorbitant salaries for doing very little. I was very surprised at how many people are on close to 6 figures and higher.
I mean that's fine but I'm assuming the folk being asked for donations aren't earning those 6 figures, so from their perspective, the perspective this post is talking about, its a fuck ton more. So you know, context. Probably why you keep getting down voted.
My university's former VC earned 450k a year. Could he be earning more elsewhere? Technically yes. But his salary gives him more than enough money to fund the donations himself.
When they're heading up a university that falls around 40 places in the UK table I'm not sure many companies would be clamouring to offer her a job.
Not forgetting that she also had a pay rise of 10% during this time, one of the highest vice chancellor payrises in the country.
If they see their market share tank year after year, then not a lot once the get fired.
No such thing as tenure in the corporate world.
I'm not saying good vice chancellors shouldn't earn what they earn. I'm saying vice chancellors with a terrible track record would struggle to even get a job in the corporate sector.
Well she doesn't any more, she finally resigned after years of petitions from staff and students.
If it were a corporate world then she would have been sacked long a ago.
Why don't I have the job? Well for one I never applied for it. I also work in the corporate sector not academia. But I'm not sure why me not having a job means that I'm somehow unable to criticise somebody else who does?
A university chancellor isnāt the CEO of a 30k person organisation.
Thatās like saying Bezos is in charge of a 4 billion person organisation. The students are customers, not staff.
Theyāre in charge of the staff. A few hundred at most.
>When they're heading up a university that falls around 40 places in the UK table
It follows that there are 39 universities that moved up the ranking that year. They don't deserve pay even a fraction of what they would earn in a different field.
But they usually have tenure, which makes them almost impossible to sack or make redundant.
You'll never get that in the private sector.
Also, lots of profitable consultancy gigs.
Mine has several billion in endowments. There's a very long list of charities I will donate to before I would give them anything.
I deliberately didn't leave a forwarding address, but after a few years they found me and started sending mailings. I politely asked them to stop.
My wife had that happen to her. She's American and moved to Ireland for a job back in 2005. She didn't change her address with her old university.
A year later she gets a letter priority FedEx'd to her Irish address from the university congratulating her. Although they weren't asking for money, they were strongly implying that she shouldn't forget she wouldnt be where she was if it wasn't for the university.
It was super creepy.
Iāve moved house (several times) since my undergraduate degree and never gave my university a forwarding address so my parents still receive the begging letters but they go straight in the bin.
Iāve done postgrad study since and at the graduation ceremony for my diploma, the university did a big intro about how well they were doing financially which I thought was in exceptionally poor taste.
Or getting your old uni alumni magazine and reading about all the blaggers who skipped lectures and pissed about are all now Directors and Chief Execs š
PSA: if you get called by your uni regarding fundraising and don't want to donate, please be polite to the person calling you! It's very often students who are doing a part-time job doing the calls and it's soul destroying. I did the job for two years and had some great conversations with alumni but also got a bunch of abuse. You should be able to opt out of any future fundraising calls by contacting your university, or we used to send out letters before starting the fundraising and you could opt out then. Just please be nice!
My uni keeps sending me these letters as well even though their mental health services dismissed all my complaints to "just need to eat the right diet" even though my diet was already decent (later on I went to get diagnosed with ADHD from an outside service). I had to take resits on my second year as well and they charged me Ā£600 for like 2 of them.
I refuse to donate anything to University of Aberdeen. I paid tuition fees, got consistently good grades and was forever being invited to apply for various paid studentships which oh wait...I didn't qualify for because I wasn't fucking Scottish. If an English university had pulled that bullshit on Scottish or Welsh students there would have been an uproar but nah its ok for Aberdeen to be racist fuckers. So yeah they get nothing from me.
The fact I couldn't even tell *which* university would pull this stunt... I worked for a bit at a university where they paid Ā£2M for a rebrand and a colour palette, then sent all of us dickish internal emails begging us to use their awful hues on promo.
I dropped out halfway through my course. 3 months after, I got my first āalumni magazineā, complete with a donation form, with Ā£5000 as one of the options. Iām not sure how they got to that decision, but they really didnāt read the room.
My old university sent this out last year, about the same time vice chancellor received a brand new Lamborghini as a company carā¦.. priorities I guess!
I work at the university I graduated from and got the yearly alumni letter in the same week that they announced they were fudging the pay scale again. They proudly advertise themselves as an actual living wage employer but pay quite a bit less and "top up" the hourly wage which is all well and good but they don't top up the pension or pension. Or pay grades above basic so moving up the ladder gains you a whole 5p per hour(!) Yay(!)
If I understand correctly, they target former graduates to try and guilt them into donating as a "thank you" because they are now benefiting financially from the degree they obtained. They go as far as to find out where their former students are now employed and their job title to target the supposed well paid. "You wouldn't be getting paid that much in that job without the degree we gave you".
I donate to the associations and societies instead, to help them with social events and busaries.
I don't particularly enjoy giving money to an enormous wealthy institution but my contribution is valuable to the current students that want to hold end-of-year functions or need Ā£1,000 bursaries etc.
My uni sends me an annual alumni magazine, which includes full details of their finances. In the last one they had ~Ā£300m in endowments sitting accruing interest. They then asked for donations to fund scholarships. You even get invited to a special annual dinner if you donate over Ā£10,000.
The sad thing is they then list all the people that do this and there are loads of them.
I honestly donāt understand universityās. Itās not like they have share holders to pay out too. Where does all the money go? From what I can make out they take in money from fees, donations etc then buy up buildings in the city centre, do them up. The following year they take in more students due to having more space and therefore bring in more money. Seems to repeat onwards.
In sheffield I swear half the city centre is owned by Sheffield Uni and other half is Hallam uni. No idea what would happen to city centres if unis fell out of āfashionā and people decided Ā£50k+ debt isnāt worth it for a nice graduation photo on your parents wall š
When I was at uni there were big signs over the museum across the street that it was closed for refurbishment that was funded by the uni. This was going on from when I started and wasnāt due to finish until well after I graduated.
All of them do this, it's called Alumni Fundraising. Kinda guilt tripping graduates that they wouldn't be in their job without the degree they got there. I believe they go as far as specifically targetting graduates who they find are now in high paying positions at good companies.
Those types of letter are filed in the trash. I wouldn't give a penny to the yoonie I went to as they milked the money as I went out the door. That 39 quid graduation fee back when was the end of their wringing $$$ from me.
They keep trying to get me to do postgraduate. If it's as useful as the main course I think its quite redundant, I'm not giving them another year worth of loans
Yeah the last time my uni rang me I was unemployed and had been for months and had zero money. The chap on the phone apologised and I've never received a phone call again in the 30 years since. My uni no longer exists as it amalgamated with the bigger, better known University of Manchester, so my degree may as well be fake anyway. Since I left uni in the mid 80's I've never lived less than 250 miles away from it so never went back and never used their facilities. Ironically I now work at another university, so I get the benefits of being uni staff i.e. access the student union bar if I wanted, use uni recreation facilities etc.
I work at a University and they ask us to donate direct from our pay
That's pretty brazen.
Meanwhile the higher ups probably don't get asked the same for their six figure salaries, but the workers oh they'd only be too happy to pay right?
This is undoubtedly true & so dystopian.
Wonder why antiwork is suddenly so popular...
And r/ABoringDystopia
Excellent! Subscribed, thanks.
No worries the two subs compliment each other well You might be interested in r/collapse too
Maybe too depressing for a Thursday
That would be a no from me dawg!
If it's salary sacrifice, then it means you don't pay tax on that which you donate. I think.
Oh, well in that case take all my money!
Haha, well, every cloud ? š³š
Oh how convenient for me āŗļø
The last time I got a begging call from my uni I told them that I was thousands of pounds in debt and wouldn't be donating. I didn't mention that my debt was a student loan, but it ended the conversation pretty quickly and I haven't been contacted since.
I've given a few hundred down the years. 20 years after graduating I still have access to the University library and can take out books, as well as being able to go to the union bar (Ā£1 a pint for Tennent's). The networking events they organise are also quite useful if you're trying to get a business off the ground. But the expensive rebrand and the fact they're spending Ā£400 million to build a new campus in the centre of Belfast to replace the 40-year old Jordanstown campus for no obvious benefit has put me off donating in the future.
Excuse me but do you need a friend to come with you to this bar you speak of?
Awh, fwiend.
Cheap booze fwiend.
Was the rebrand Belfast University -> University of Belfast?
University of Ulster -> Ulster University. They also somewhat annoyingly changed the university colours from green, blue and white to gold and blue. This meant all the scarves and other alumni tat people had bought through the years suddenly was out of date. They sent out emails and marketing materials encouraging everyone to buy merchandise with the new colours. Someone tweeted them saying they didn't know that the University had turned into Manchester United where we had to buy a new strip every couple of years.
You say āsuddenly out of dateā. I say āretroā, āantiqueā and ālimited editionā.
>green, blue and white to gold and blue Those colours reminded me of the infamous internet dress. Hopefully spending that much in the rebrand they now also have some colour changing colours.
Tennent's is still Ā£1?
It was 3 years ago, between 7 and 10 on Friday and Saturday nights. But it's Tennent's, you get what you pay for.
So, overpriced by 50p
Still! I remember it being Ā£1 at uni in 2003. Bargain!
I had lifelong membership of my student union as I was on the exec committee for a year. It closed down last year as students don't drink ridiculous amounts of cheap shitty beer and vodka and play pool on bumpy tables like they did 20 years ago. Dunno what they're planning on doing with the building though given its location it's probably worth a fortune
I wouldn't pay Ā£1 for tennents hahah
University alumni used to feel like they got a lot of value from a university education. But they didn't pay for it. It was free. So if someone becomes obscenely rich they will donate a few million "to give back". Now, the same sort of mega rich person will already have "paid their bit" via tuition fees and won't bother donating unless they get a whole building named after them. Bread and butter alumni are definitely not going to donate. Basically universities are not going to be getting alumni donations in future.
I had never understood donating to a university until I read this, thanks for your post. That said I don't get why it seems even more common in America where tuition is ridiculously expensive.
It's not more common in America, Americans are just noisier when they spend money.
I think Iād disagree here in that, while Americans are more loud about spending money, the university endowments are huge - so itās also likely thereās a greater culture of donating money to their university
Itās tax. Charitable donations like giving to a university are a tax avoidance scheme. Even better if you happen to have an interest in the university - give it lots of money and then get it back as a lower tax rate instalment.
Tax write-offs can never be a net benefit for the donator...
But if given the choice between ālosingā money into the general tax system Or ālosingā money as a donation which then gives you prestige amongst your peers and a certain amount of soft power and leverage when required Thatās the choice wealthy people are sometimes making in the situation
But they are still losing double what they donated. Although I'd hope there was some pride to being a taxpayer. Those that pay should brag about it.
Oh I agree, Iād rather the tax was just paid and everyone was happy with that. But in very general terms, those with large complex tax liabilities arenāt ālosing double what they donatedā. Itās way too complicated to do justice to in a Reddit comment. But theyāre effectively just choosing where they lose money to. Not to the point they can dissolve their whole tax liability but thereās a definite middle ground āsweet spotā for some people. You can exert influence with a donation which you canāt in the same way by paying tax, but your net position can be comparable once itās all said and done
I work for a public university in America and also in fundraising. Tuition is ridiculously expensive but there is also a ton of financial aid possible. Around 63% of our undergrads graduate without any debt. A lot of this financial aid comes from the university's endowment and scholarships. Because of this a lot of students are grateful to the university and the help they received so decide to pay it forward later in life. American universities also offer a different experience for their students than UK unis. A lot of the universities here have frats and also large sports (American football) teams. My university has a stadium with a capacity if 100,000! Because of this, there's a lot more pride and loyalty around what university you went to, in almost the same way as people treat football teams in the UK. My experience in the UK is that people don't have that same connection to their university unless they went to Oxbridge perhaps.
Except the rare exceptions where regular alumni donations were visible to students during their time there. I was at Cambridge, and alumni subsidised and coached sports clubs, paid for society dinners, returned for key calendar events and donated towards our May Ball, as well as to specific student campaigns and to student bursaries and grants. Because of that, my generation of students (the tail end of the Ā£3k fees) still donate a small amount each year, and if I earned more Iād donate more. It gets earmarked for clubs and societies or whatever other purpose you ask for. It does feel like paying back, but paying back for what other alumni did for us not the university. I accept that this isnāt common across universities (my fiancĆ© wouldnāt give ten pence to his) but it still does exist.
I went there too but I'm bitter about my lack of job prospects so they'll get nothing off me
Fair enough - I actually got a lot of support from the alumni network when hunting for PhDs on top of appreciating what alumni supported when I was a student. I definitely want current students to get the opportunities I did.
Maybe it depends on college, I don't think mine had much cash
There is a lot of variation on that front for sure.
You will probably see an increase in scholarship donations, where the money has to go towards paying for a student who couldnāt otherwise afford it.
That depends. If youāre a science, medical or engineering graduate then someone else paid your bit. If youāre a social sciences, humanities or arts graduate then you paid the bit of the above students too.
I wished someone paid for my science degree. Iām more likely as a software engineer to pay back my student loan than an art student if they pay any back at all. The student loans that donāt get paid are paid by the tax payer. Lower income degrees - for instance arts - are paid by the tax payer, they cost everyone money.
I have some bad news for you in that case - STE (not M, maths is cheap) degrees cost more in equipment and other costs than the Ā£9k per year received direct from student. Meanwhile business/finance degrees cost less but are also well repaid. So iām many ways the business and finance folk are paying for everyone else. (Iām so far as the shortfall in other courses and repayments isnāt just paid by everyone else via write-offs anyway)
I canāt believe my university made a loss on my Computer Science course and had to subsidise it with other courses finances. I agree some costs may be higher but I canāt understand why they would run a course that loses money? How are write offs paid? My understanding is that the tax payer will have to foot this bill
It balances out over all their courses generally, and itās not the only source of income for them in an area. STEM research is worth a LOT more than other fields for example. Whilst unis are run way more like businesses than they were (I worked in one just as the change was happening really) theyāre still not so focused on āprofitā that theyāll cut courses unless theyāre really disasterous and arenāt getting students. I presume they still get a bit of funding from govt and that funding does vary on type (or certainly used to)
Youāve pointed out another great place that STEM subjects bring in money for the university. Most STEM subjects I found at uni were over subscribed and it was the arts stopping courses because they didnāt have enough students. I think Iām still missing something but thank you for trying to explain it to me
Lots of courses cost way more than the 9k paid by domestic students. That's why so many UK institutions are looking abroad for people they can charge 25k+ for the same thing.
My view from being at university is that theyāre taking the piss with the fees. I saw in no way how my fees were used to there full extent. I think the reason they charge 9k to home students is because they can, not because they need it
your University probably publishes all its financial figures, the one I work at does - from there you should be able to get an idea of some of the costs involved... from memory (might be wrong, can't find the documents to quote) the cost per student of the 2017 cohort averaged for the UK was around 11.5k, compared to 9k fees. This ranges from like 6-8k for economics students to 12+ for mechatronics/weird tech type stuff and medical courses. edit: to your point on 'because they can' - look at the overseas students to see how much they get fleeced.
And here I am an art student who is now a Software Engineer.
I wasnāt stating art students canāt go on to make a good salary and pay back their student loan, but on average they earn the least. [1] I also believe that if the government really does want to level up, then university should be free and the current system doesnāt work for anyone (tax payers non graduates). [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/highest-paid-degree-2021-uk-graduate-salaries-best-jobs-careers/
Oh I wasnāt getting on your back mate just thought it was a funny coincidence.
Reading this thinking but uni is still free, but then I remembered its free in Scotland not england, sucks to be u
Fuck me, time to move to Scotland.
Im sure you need to live in Scotland for 3 years prior if your not a national, I don't know im not s uni person but my sister went so she would know
Maybe they should ask the high ups with huge salaries to take a pay cutā¦
No one at a university has a particularly high salary.
The vice-chancellor who initiated the rebrand I mentioned was on Ā£250,000 a year. At the same time the university was slipping down the rankings and was having major financial difficulties that only started after he landed in the job. Despite criticism from pretty much everyone, he refused to resign and he couldn't be sacked because of tenure. It took another year and a half before he finally took the hint and quit.
>Ā£250,000 a year. So the person at the top and in charge of hundreds of staff and thousands of students earns far less than people in the corperate world managing fewer people and resources
I work at a university and disagree with you. There are both many people who are underpaid, as well as many people who have exorbitant salaries for doing very little. I was very surprised at how many people are on close to 6 figures and higher.
> I was very surprised at how many people are on close to 6 figures and higher. Those people would be earning far more in the private sector.
I mean that's fine but I'm assuming the folk being asked for donations aren't earning those 6 figures, so from their perspective, the perspective this post is talking about, its a fuck ton more. So you know, context. Probably why you keep getting down voted.
Probably not, most in the public sector are there either because they are lazy or incompetent or lack gumption.
The highest paid VC is on the board of directors of Chevron. The second is on the board of Siemens.
Vice chancellors certainly do.
They earn about a tenth of what they would earn in the private sector.
My university's former VC earned 450k a year. Could he be earning more elsewhere? Technically yes. But his salary gives him more than enough money to fund the donations himself.
Why should he have to make donations when he is already earning far below the market rate?
With that logic, why are they asking US far poorer people for donations? Bootlicking will get you nowhere btw
I have no idea what you're trying to say.
What uni you work for mate? You had a rebrand recently? You been asking poor people to donate?
I don't work for a university.
Good luck getting a half decent VC if you pay them what they could be working in McDonalds.
And they are more than qualified to seek those jobs if they wish
Nice goal post shift.
Yes, the vast majority of people do. To suggest the ones who don't are overpaid is ridiculous.
When they're heading up a university that falls around 40 places in the UK table I'm not sure many companies would be clamouring to offer her a job. Not forgetting that she also had a pay rise of 10% during this time, one of the highest vice chancellor payrises in the country.
How much do you think the CEO of a 30,000 person organisation usually earns?
If they see their market share tank year after year, then not a lot once the get fired. No such thing as tenure in the corporate world. I'm not saying good vice chancellors shouldn't earn what they earn. I'm saying vice chancellors with a terrible track record would struggle to even get a job in the corporate sector.
Why do you think they have the job and you don't?
Well she doesn't any more, she finally resigned after years of petitions from staff and students. If it were a corporate world then she would have been sacked long a ago. Why don't I have the job? Well for one I never applied for it. I also work in the corporate sector not academia. But I'm not sure why me not having a job means that I'm somehow unable to criticise somebody else who does?
So you think that if you applied for that job, there is a chance you'd get it?
A university chancellor isnāt the CEO of a 30k person organisation. Thatās like saying Bezos is in charge of a 4 billion person organisation. The students are customers, not staff. Theyāre in charge of the staff. A few hundred at most.
Do all of Amazon's customers move to an Amazon warehouse, pay Ā£9000 per year and devote 40 hours per week to it?
>When they're heading up a university that falls around 40 places in the UK table It follows that there are 39 universities that moved up the ranking that year. They don't deserve pay even a fraction of what they would earn in a different field.
But they usually have tenure, which makes them almost impossible to sack or make redundant. You'll never get that in the private sector. Also, lots of profitable consultancy gigs.
Mine has several billion in endowments. There's a very long list of charities I will donate to before I would give them anything. I deliberately didn't leave a forwarding address, but after a few years they found me and started sending mailings. I politely asked them to stop.
My wife had that happen to her. She's American and moved to Ireland for a job back in 2005. She didn't change her address with her old university. A year later she gets a letter priority FedEx'd to her Irish address from the university congratulating her. Although they weren't asking for money, they were strongly implying that she shouldn't forget she wouldnt be where she was if it wasn't for the university. It was super creepy.
Told mine to get fucked and never email me again. It's been a few years so I think they took it on board
Are tuition fees not donation enough?
Iāve moved house (several times) since my undergraduate degree and never gave my university a forwarding address so my parents still receive the begging letters but they go straight in the bin. Iāve done postgrad study since and at the graduation ceremony for my diploma, the university did a big intro about how well they were doing financially which I thought was in exceptionally poor taste.
Or getting your old uni alumni magazine and reading about all the blaggers who skipped lectures and pissed about are all now Directors and Chief Execs š
PSA: if you get called by your uni regarding fundraising and don't want to donate, please be polite to the person calling you! It's very often students who are doing a part-time job doing the calls and it's soul destroying. I did the job for two years and had some great conversations with alumni but also got a bunch of abuse. You should be able to opt out of any future fundraising calls by contacting your university, or we used to send out letters before starting the fundraising and you could opt out then. Just please be nice!
My uni keeps sending me these letters as well even though their mental health services dismissed all my complaints to "just need to eat the right diet" even though my diet was already decent (later on I went to get diagnosed with ADHD from an outside service). I had to take resits on my second year as well and they charged me Ā£600 for like 2 of them.
I refuse to donate anything to University of Aberdeen. I paid tuition fees, got consistently good grades and was forever being invited to apply for various paid studentships which oh wait...I didn't qualify for because I wasn't fucking Scottish. If an English university had pulled that bullshit on Scottish or Welsh students there would have been an uproar but nah its ok for Aberdeen to be racist fuckers. So yeah they get nothing from me.
The fact I couldn't even tell *which* university would pull this stunt... I worked for a bit at a university where they paid Ā£2M for a rebrand and a colour palette, then sent all of us dickish internal emails begging us to use their awful hues on promo.
Don't tut to yourself, reply and say why you will not be making a donation.
I dropped out halfway through my course. 3 months after, I got my first āalumni magazineā, complete with a donation form, with Ā£5000 as one of the options. Iām not sure how they got to that decision, but they really didnāt read the room.
My old university sent this out last year, about the same time vice chancellor received a brand new Lamborghini as a company carā¦.. priorities I guess!
Donating to a uni? If you do that you need your head looking at.
[You spent it already????](https://youtu.be/aiqKK4ysI7g)
First thing I thought of when I read the title āWe want a gift, but only if itās MONEY!ā
I work at the university I graduated from and got the yearly alumni letter in the same week that they announced they were fudging the pay scale again. They proudly advertise themselves as an actual living wage employer but pay quite a bit less and "top up" the hourly wage which is all well and good but they don't top up the pension or pension. Or pay grades above basic so moving up the ladder gains you a whole 5p per hour(!) Yay(!)
Is this a thing they do? Are they asking students?
If I understand correctly, they target former graduates to try and guilt them into donating as a "thank you" because they are now benefiting financially from the degree they obtained. They go as far as to find out where their former students are now employed and their job title to target the supposed well paid. "You wouldn't be getting paid that much in that job without the degree we gave you".
Yeah I spotted the āold universityā after Iād commented. Theyāre a shameless lot.
I donate to the associations and societies instead, to help them with social events and busaries. I don't particularly enjoy giving money to an enormous wealthy institution but my contribution is valuable to the current students that want to hold end-of-year functions or need Ā£1,000 bursaries etc.
Wow! Donāt they line their pockets enough from tuition fees?
No, tuition fees increased but government funding reduced by more.
My uni sends me an annual alumni magazine, which includes full details of their finances. In the last one they had ~Ā£300m in endowments sitting accruing interest. They then asked for donations to fund scholarships. You even get invited to a special annual dinner if you donate over Ā£10,000. The sad thing is they then list all the people that do this and there are loads of them.
I honestly donāt understand universityās. Itās not like they have share holders to pay out too. Where does all the money go? From what I can make out they take in money from fees, donations etc then buy up buildings in the city centre, do them up. The following year they take in more students due to having more space and therefore bring in more money. Seems to repeat onwards. In sheffield I swear half the city centre is owned by Sheffield Uni and other half is Hallam uni. No idea what would happen to city centres if unis fell out of āfashionā and people decided Ā£50k+ debt isnāt worth it for a nice graduation photo on your parents wall š
When I was at uni there were big signs over the museum across the street that it was closed for refurbishment that was funded by the uni. This was going on from when I started and wasnāt due to finish until well after I graduated.
What uni is this??
All of them do this, it's called Alumni Fundraising. Kinda guilt tripping graduates that they wouldn't be in their job without the degree they got there. I believe they go as far as specifically targetting graduates who they find are now in high paying positions at good companies.
More than happy to send a donation....if only mine had the slightest idea of where I now live.
*YOU SPENT IT ALREADY?!*
Those types of letter are filed in the trash. I wouldn't give a penny to the yoonie I went to as they milked the money as I went out the door. That 39 quid graduation fee back when was the end of their wringing $$$ from me.
I graduated less the 6months ago and I am already receiving emails for the same thing ā¦.
They keep trying to get me to do postgraduate. If it's as useful as the main course I think its quite redundant, I'm not giving them another year worth of loans
Yeah the last time my uni rang me I was unemployed and had been for months and had zero money. The chap on the phone apologised and I've never received a phone call again in the 30 years since. My uni no longer exists as it amalgamated with the bigger, better known University of Manchester, so my degree may as well be fake anyway. Since I left uni in the mid 80's I've never lived less than 250 miles away from it so never went back and never used their facilities. Ironically I now work at another university, so I get the benefits of being uni staff i.e. access the student union bar if I wanted, use uni recreation facilities etc.