I really started getting into podcasts recently. I was almost mad at myself that I had never dove into the world of podcasts sooner quite honestly. Whether I was listening to sustainability topics by the Department of Energy while working out at the gym or NPR politics while sitting on the train to work I had begun embrace this idea of convenient and easy access to interesting topics that not only entertained me and passed the time but also gave me some good fuel to power my brain and things to wrap my head around.
However, I'm not writing this week about podcasts in general, but rather one that I listened to most recently. The podcast is called "Revisionist History", created and narrated by popular author Malcolm Gladwell, who just so happens to be one of my favorite authors. Within this podcast Gladwell looks back and analyzes something in the past that deserves a second look. As interesting as podcasts are, I have never been so compelled to write about a certain episode until the most recent one I had just listened to. The episode was titled "My Little Hundred Million" and it was about philanthropy towards our colleges and universities and if we are doing it correctly or not.
The episode starts off by focusing on an interesting story about a man named Hank Rowan. Rowan went to MIT for engineering and later moved to New Jersey where he started his own company called Inductotherm which focuses on induction technology and his a major furnace part supplier. To say the least, Hank's company grew and became extremely successful and with that came multitudes of money. With that money, Rowan wanted to give some of it back to education. Where the story gets interesting is that in 1992, instead of donating to extremely prestigious universities such as Harvard, Stanford or even his own alma mater, he ended up donating $100 million dollars to a small college near his company called Greensboro State. The money was to go to the college of engineering for the school so that engineering minds would flourish just as Hank's did.
As you can imagine, this was a surprising and extremely generous donation by Hank and his wife, Betty. In fact, at that time, it was the largest gift to a public college in the history of higher education. What was going through Mr. Rowan's mind though? Why, out of all the schools that he could have donated to, decided on supplying monies to a school that was hardly relevant at all?
Before passing away in 2015,the man himself was asked that very question in an interview. The answer was fairly simple. He had known that MIT at the time was trying to raise $750 million dollars and he felt that his $100 million dollars would "hardly make a difference at all." He really wanted to make a difference in this world and his donation has certainly shown that as the Rowan University (they renamed it after him) has greatly increased the numbers of students within their college of engineering.
Mr. Rowan believed that fixing the education systems of the world was a "weak-link" problem, as described by Malcolm Gladwell in the podcast. The idea is that it is more important to help the ones who are struggling instead of improving those who already have enough help. This whole idea is much better explained in the podcast so I truly do encourage you to take a listen to it.
The main point I want to get to however is about what came after. Philanthropic actions were on the rise but most of the people who were donating were still giving to those top 10ish schools who were already extremely successful. Such an example is when recently, Phil Knight, Co-founded of Nike, donated $400 million to Stanford. Although this was an extremely generous gift to higher education, was it to the right part of higher education? With the endowment fund of Stanford already consisting of over $22 billion, was this just another drop in the bucket "hardly make a difference" sort of thing Hank Rowan was thinking about. What could it have done for a Greensboro State type of school? What about four of them?
As a student myself and going to a large public university I have definitely taken time to think about my own universities donations and endowment funds.I'm sure if I was a billionaire I would donate to my school. Of course I would. It's a place where my mind flourished and my higher education was created. However, as our education system around the country is taking hits and cuts, maybe there would be other universities and colleges that could use that money even more. Maybe I would want to donate to a smaller, less successful college because of the hope and idea that it could then grow into the university that I loved going to and will always be proud of going to till the day I die. I think that is the mind set that was going through Mr. Rowan's head.
I once again encourage you to take a listen to the podcast and perhaps you take a moment to think as well.
