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A Wall Street billionaire just gave Harvard the biggest gift in its history

Hamartia Antidote

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Paulson donates 400 million to Harvard - Business Insider

Another Wall Street billionaire has made a massive donation to an Ivy League school.

Hedge fund manager John Paulson donated $400 million to endow Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Bloomberg News reports.

Harvard, which has the largest endowment in the country, said it was the largest gift in the university's history.

Paulson, who graduated from Harvard Business School in 1980, will also get his name on the building. The school will be called the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Paulson launched his hedge fund in 1994 with about $2 billion in capital. He shot to fame after making billions betting against subprime during the housing crisis. He now manages close to $20 billion and has an estimated net worth of $11.2 billion.

Just last month, billionaire private-equity chief Steve Schwarzman donated $150 million to Yale University to build a new campus center. The commons will be called the "Schwarzman Center."

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(This was before the announcement)
Harvard’s Endowment Is Bigger Than Half the World’s Economies - Business news - Boston.com

Harvard University’s largest-in-the-country endowment saw returns of 15.4 percent in the last year, and now stands at $36.4 billion. That’s a lot of money.

Just for fun, here’s a look at how that compares to gross domestic products worldwide. According to the International Monetary Fund, that $36.4 billion would settle in between Jordan and Latvia—about smack dab in the middle of the world’s economies.

What to make of that? Well, considering that a GDP and an endowment are very different things, not much except that more than 90 countries generate less economic activity in a given year than Harvard has hanging around. (Just a bit of the endowment is actually available to Harvard; in the past five years, $11.6 billion has gone to the university, accounting for about a third of its budget, according to The Boston Globe.)

But the comparison is one way of putting Harvard’s riches, which have a brand new overseer, into perspective. Another comparison: how about a billion nice lobster dinners? Yeah, it’s a lot of money.
 
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The economic impact of these Universities for the society and the nation far exceed the endowments they receive. Investment in science and education overall is the best any person and nation can do.

Exactly my thought.
 
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prestigious school have a different way to get their fund than a normal school that sold diploma for a living.

In the end, a successful school turns out successful leader and they inturn invest back into their alma mater and turn out yet another generation of successful leader.

When your school, like mine, are taking more Overseas student than Local student because they can pay full fare upfront, then you know your school are in trouble.
 
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Nothing says charity like donating huge sums of money to schools that don't need it so you can get your name on a building.
 
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The economic impact of these Universities for the society and the nation far exceed the endowments they receive. Investment in science and education overall is the best any person and nation can do.

Exactly no investment is Science ever goes to waste
 
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