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Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - newguy - 05-04-2022
from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2022/05/04/stanford-university-announces-largest-gift-in-its-history11-billion-from-john-and-ann-doerr/?sh=5b1aeb8414e6
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - AxeMan89 - 05-04-2022
This is swell. Glad money is going to these fields of study...
but Stanford is already impossible to get into and I didn't read anything about a concurrent increase in enrollment. So doesn't this just pull students from other fields on campus? It's long past time for the ultra-selective colleges to add undergraduates, especially such a land-rich place like Stanford.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - Goose - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 01:52 PM)AxeMan89 Wrote: This is swell. Glad money is going to these fields of study...I TOTALLY agree that Stanford's failure to increase class size significantly is a scandal. What I fear is that the new department will require new buildings and a new drone staff to fill up way too much of the "land-rich" space, while not adding any undergraduate students. The population of the USA is 1.6 times what it was when I entered Stanford as a freshman. The undergraduate class size has not increased anywhere near that factor. Why?
but Stanford is already impossible to get into and I didn't read anything about a concurrent increase in enrollment. So doesn't this just pull students from other fields on campus? It's long past time for the ultra-selective colleges to add undergraduates, especially such a land-rich place like Stanford.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - newguy - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 03:08 PM)Goose Wrote:(05-04-2022, 01:52 PM)AxeMan89 Wrote: This is swell. Glad money is going to these fields of study...I TOTALLY agree that Stanford's failure to increase class size significantly is a scandal. What I fear is that the new department will require new buildings and a new drone staff to fill up way too much of the "land-rich" space, while not adding any undergraduate students. The population of the USA is 1.6 times what it was when I entered Stanford as a freshman. The undergraduate class size has not increased anywhere near that factor. Why?
but Stanford is already impossible to get into and I didn't read anything about a concurrent increase in enrollment. So doesn't this just pull students from other fields on campus? It's long past time for the ultra-selective colleges to add undergraduates, especially such a land-rich place like Stanford.
an excellent question.
at one point in the recent past, Stanford was more selective than Harvard when it came to undergrads.....might still be for all i know.
this runs the risk of making the admissions process arbitrary, if it isn't already.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - Farm93 - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 03:08 PM)Goose Wrote:I have always thought that ~1700 per class is a good size for the Stanford experience. Perhaps not coincidentally, many other highly selective schools have similar undergraduate enrollment figures.(05-04-2022, 01:52 PM)AxeMan89 Wrote: This is swell. Glad money is going to these fields of study...I TOTALLY agree that Stanford's failure to increase class size significantly is a scandal. What I fear is that the new department will require new buildings and a new drone staff to fill up way too much of the "land-rich" space, while not adding any undergraduate students. The population of the USA is 1.6 times what it was when I entered Stanford as a freshman. The undergraduate class size has not increased anywhere near that factor. Why?
but Stanford is already impossible to get into and I didn't read anything about a concurrent increase in enrollment. So doesn't this just pull students from other fields on campus? It's long past time for the ultra-selective colleges to add undergraduates, especially such a land-rich place like Stanford.
If each class was 1.6X-2X larger then the undergrad experience would run the risk of becoming too big and overwhelming for students to have that sense of a shared community and common experiences most parents and high school students are seeking from a highly selective (and expensive) private university.
FWIW - I do worry about the rapid growth of staff numbers and research buildings relative to the stable undergraduate student population. Though I realize the money, and prestige has been in award winning research and generally funding and supporting those efforts have very little to do with the undergrad experience.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - Goose - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 03:44 PM)Farm93 Wrote:I agree to some extent that if the class size increases above about 1700, it may change the "Stanford Experience". However, I think that experience has changed over time in ways I never anticipated. When I was at Stanford, leaving campus to go anyplace was kind of a "big deal". Stanford was truly "The Farm". There are so many changes I can't even begin to enumerate. However, the people I knew were mostly in my dorm(s) and in my classes/major. That was probably about maybe 300-400 people. The rest of the class was kind of a background. I think that is typical. I am not convinced that increasing the class size to 2500 would change that much. I do agree with you that freshman classes of e.g. 10,000 create an atmosphere where the student/faculty ratio can become problematic and everybody is just a number. However, I think we had maybe 50 people majoring in EE in my freshman class. If it had been double that, things wouldn't have changed much IMHO.(05-04-2022, 03:08 PM)Goose Wrote: I TOTALLY agree that Stanford's failure to increase class size significantly is a scandal. What I fear is that the new department will require new buildings and a new drone staff to fill up way too much of the "land-rich" space, while not adding any undergraduate students. The population of the USA is 1.6 times what it was when I entered Stanford as a freshman. The undergraduate class size has not increased anywhere near that factor. Why?
I have always thought that ~1700 per class is a good size for the Stanford experience. Perhaps not coincidentally, many other highly selective schools have similar undergraduate enrollment figures.
If each class was 1.6X-2X larger then the undergrad experience would run the risk of becoming too big and overwhelming for students to have that sense of a shared community and common experiences most parents and high school students are seeking from a highly selective (and expensive) private university.
FWIW - I do worry about the rapid growth of staff numbers and research buildings relative to the stable undergraduate student population. Though I realize the money, and prestige has been in award winning research and generally funding and supporting those efforts have very little to do with the undergrad experience.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - cardcrimson - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 03:44 PM)Farm93 Wrote: FWIW - I do worry about the rapid growth of staff numbers and research buildings relative to the stable undergraduate student population. Though I realize the money, and prestige has been in award winning research and generally funding and supporting those efforts have very little to do with the undergrad experience.
Ironically, was in the engineering department yesterday talking with the corporate relations folks. It's been nearly 40 years since I've been in an engineering building on campus. Good lord, the opulence was astounding. Terman was fairly new in my day, yet apparently was torn down for bigger and better. Don't think there's much more room to develop, buildings are everywhere.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - Goose - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 04:09 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:Unfortunately, the Arboretum is next to go I fear. The encroachments for parking and storage are already there. The Terman building didn't exist when I was at Stanford. As I understand it, it was an architectural and execution nightmare. Supposedly one thing that doomed it was termites. They did major structural damage and worse still they couldn't get rid of them. Apparently the building also had chronic water leaks. I got all this second hand from a faculty member that had an office in the building. Oh, by the way, Engineering Corner isn't.(05-04-2022, 03:44 PM)Farm93 Wrote: FWIW - I do worry about the rapid growth of staff numbers and research buildings relative to the stable undergraduate student population. Though I realize the money, and prestige has been in award winning research and generally funding and supporting those efforts have very little to do with the undergrad experience.
Ironically, was in the engineering department yesterday talking with the corporate relations folks. It's been nearly 40 years since I've been in an engineering building on campus. Good lord, the opulence was astounding. Terman was fairly new in my day, yet apparently was torn down for bigger and better. Don't think there's much more room to develop, buildings are everywhere.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - Cardinal77 - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 04:23 PM)Goose Wrote:(05-04-2022, 04:09 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:Unfortunately, the Arboretum is next to go I fear. The encroachments for parking and storage are already there. The Terman building didn't exist when I was at Stanford. As I understand it, it was an architectural and execution nightmare. Supposedly one thing that doomed it was termites. They did major structural damage and worse still they couldn't get rid of them. Apparently the building also had chronic water leaks. I got all this second hand from a faculty member that had an office in the building. Oh, by the way, Engineering Corner isn't.(05-04-2022, 03:44 PM)Farm93 Wrote: FWIW - I do worry about the rapid growth of staff numbers and research buildings relative to the stable undergraduate student population. Though I realize the money, and prestige has been in award winning research and generally funding and supporting those efforts have very little to do with the undergrad experience.
Ironically, was in the engineering department yesterday talking with the corporate relations folks. It's been nearly 40 years since I've been in an engineering building on campus. Good lord, the opulence was astounding. Terman was fairly new in my day, yet apparently was torn down for bigger and better. Don't think there's much more room to develop, buildings are everywhere.
Santa Clara Country won't let them expand the undergraduate population because of environmental issues. Perhaps this donation will facilitate a solution and empower a period of new growth in the student body.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - Goose - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 04:58 PM)Cardinal77 Wrote: Santa Clara Country won't let them expand the undergraduate population because of environmental issues. Perhaps this donation will facilitate a solution and empower a period of new growth in the student body.Right. And I am sure they pushed back on that real hard before settling for building multitudes of buildings that they fill with staff that doesn't live on campus and fills the roads commuting to campus.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - UltimateCard - 05-04-2022
Remember when Don Kennedy led the Centennial Campaign? It was the first capital campaign in U.S. higher ed to have a goal of $1 billion, and was deemed “bold” at the time. It took six years (1985-91) to raise the $1.3B. Is there a Moore’s Law for fundraising?
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - TrumpCard - 05-04-2022
Wow, the Doerrs give a billion plus to our alma mater and there are more negative comments than positive ones. I’m grateful they gave money to Stanford at all. It’s their money and they get to choose what they do with it. If you all want to expand the undergrad population and have another billion to donate, I’m sure something could be worked out. In the meanwhile, I’m hopeful their donation sparks useful research in sustainability and climate science.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - chrisk - 05-04-2022
Stanford’s expiring General Use Plan with the county has very little authorized square footage remaining for development.
Stanford started negotiating a GUP to go through 2035 in 2016. After increasing demands from the county and the city, Stanford halted negotiations in 2019.
In the meantime, Stanford acquired an option on the purchase of the Belmont campus of NDNU by 2025.
A lot of the contention was around the amount of housing Stanford would build for workers, building a new school for Palo Alto, reducing traffic, and committing in perpetuity.the current Stanford Open Space. Stanford wanted to negotiate a development agreement in connection with its commitments to build housing.
It will probably take a change in the local political environment for Stanford to get approval for significant increases in students and staff on the main campus.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - jacket3ree - 05-04-2022
I was a Termite back in the day, spending a lot of time in its basement. The basement below the pond. Of course it leaked. That was a funky building, but at least it had some quirky charm. I'm not a big fan of the new(er) engineering digs. Rat maze corporate straight outta Sunnyvale.
My TA office was in the hydraulics lab. They spiffed that up long after I left, but retained its essential character.
I'm not sure raw numbers make that much difference in the experience. My high school class was 556 and I gave a crap about maybe 25 people. Same at Tech; same at Stanford. The university bureaucracy was that of an Ohio State, so what's the difference? Although, to be fair, I've never been to The Ohio State University, so maybe that is really Kafkaesque level stuff.
Interesting gift. Seems like Stanford is already doing that stuff, but they'll have a cool new building, a bed of large bills to build it on, and I'll sleep better knowing Stanford is bringing its full weight to bear on all the world's vexing problems. World peace in five, four......
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - cardcrimson - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 07:06 PM)TrumpCard Wrote: Wow, the Doerrs give a billion plus to our alma mater and there are more negative comments than positive ones. I’m grateful they gave money to Stanford at all. It’s their money and they get to choose what they do with it. If you all want to expand the undergrad population and have another billion to donate, I’m sure something could be worked out. In the meanwhile, I’m hopeful their donation sparks useful research in sustainability and climate science.Quite the contrary, I appreciate it very much and hope their generosity does fund research in sustainability and climate science, especially as my client is working in those areas (graphene based quantum heat engines and energy storage systems). Would be a shame if it went for opulence and grandeur.
BTW, where's that graphene thread when I need it?
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - Mick - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 03:44 PM)Farm93 Wrote:(05-04-2022, 03:08 PM)Goose Wrote:I have always thought that ~1700 per class is a good size for the Stanford experience. Perhaps not coincidentally, many other highly selective schools have similar undergraduate enrollment figures.(05-04-2022, 01:52 PM)AxeMan89 Wrote: This is swell. Glad money is going to these fields of study...I TOTALLY agree that Stanford's failure to increase class size significantly is a scandal. What I fear is that the new department will require new buildings and a new drone staff to fill up way too much of the "land-rich" space, while not adding any undergraduate students. The population of the USA is 1.6 times what it was when I entered Stanford as a freshman. The undergraduate class size has not increased anywhere near that factor. Why?
but Stanford is already impossible to get into and I didn't read anything about a concurrent increase in enrollment. So doesn't this just pull students from other fields on campus? It's long past time for the ultra-selective colleges to add undergraduates, especially such a land-rich place like Stanford.
If each class was 1.6X-2X larger then the undergrad experience would run the risk of becoming too big and overwhelming for students to have that sense of a shared community and common experiences most parents and high school students are seeking from a highly selective (and expensive) private university.
FWIW - I do worry about the rapid growth of staff numbers and research buildings relative to the stable undergraduate student population. Though I realize the money, and prestige has been in award winning research and generally funding and supporting those efforts have very little to do with the undergrad experience.
Rich people problems... ;D
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - Goose - 05-04-2022
(05-04-2022, 07:17 PM)chrisk Wrote: Stanford’s expiring General Use Plan with the county has very little authorized square footage remaining for development.Agreed. And that is the problem. They didn't appropriately prioritize undergraduate education IMHO. Instead, they built what is essentially a corporate research park. They didn't need to build that on campus. It could be on Hillview Ave just as well. I understand the Theranos building is available too. Undergraduate education kind of has to be on campus. Graduate education is more flexible, and research only needs to be proximate. SRI worked just fine in that regard. One can also quibble about the space allocated to show vs the space allocated for actual work in many of the new buildings, but that is a nuance compared to the bogus priorities IMHO.
Quote:Stanford started negotiating a GUP to go through 2035 in 2016. After increasing demands from the county and the city, Stanford halted negotiations in 2019.While I think buying NDNU campus could be a good idea, splitting up undergraduate education by moving part of it to Belmont strikes me as a bad idea. It is going to be tricky to figure out how to use the new campus. I hope they can come up with a reasonable approach. I have a hard time imagining something that can work myself.
In the meantime, Stanford acquired an option on the purchase of the Belmont campus of NDNU by 2025.
Quote:A lot of the contention was around the amount of housing Stanford would build for workers, building a new school for Palo Alto, reducing traffic, and committing in perpetuity.the current Stanford Open Space. Stanford wanted to negotiate a development agreement in connection with its commitments to build housing.I don't think they need a "significant increase in staff", in fact I think they need quite the opposite. Get rid of staff and add students one for one. There are plenty of positions at Stanford that can go away with little if any effect on the quality of education. We have witnessed that fact before when budget cuts were required in "lean times". It may be with Stanford's very large endowment now there will be no such times, but I doubt the staff situation is more critical now than then. Perhaps the change in political environment needs to be at Stanford.
It will probably take a change in the local political environment for Stanford to get approval for significant increases in students and staff on the main campus.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - TrumpCard - 05-05-2022
That Belmont campus (and any other reasonably proximate land Stanford can acquire) should be nearly 100% housing for graduate students, staff, and/or faculty. Belmont is just a few stops from Palo Alto on the soon to be electrified and speedier Cal Train. With the price of housing in the Bay Area increasing as it has over the last 25 years, Stanford could end up building a sustainability school for a university that itself is not sustainable.
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - akiddoc - 05-05-2022
(05-04-2022, 05:03 PM)Goose Wrote:(05-04-2022, 04:58 PM)Cardinal77 Wrote: Santa Clara Country won't let them expand the undergraduate population because of environmental issues. Perhaps this donation will facilitate a solution and empower a period of new growth in the student body.
Right. And I am sure they pushed back on that real hard before settling for building multitudes of buildings that they fill with staff that doesn't live on campus and fills the roads commuting to campus.
Stanford was planning to add 500 students to each undergraduate class. But every special interest group and every governmental agency in the region regards Stanford as a cash cow to be milked. It wasn't going to get done without paying blackmail money to multiple entities.
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2019/11/01/stanford-withdraws-application-for-campus-expansion
RE: Stanford Announces Largest Gift in its History - Phogge - 05-05-2022
To paraphrase “Hoosiers” here’s to all those little schools just trying to stay in business.