Dr. Grauer's Column - A Forest, Not A Fortress

A Forest, Not A Fortress
Endowments Matter for Yale—but for Small Schools?

By Stuart Grauer

Endowment is not the topic most of us reach for with morning coffee. (I do.) For some people it ranks right in there between watching trees grow and reading appliance warranties. (I do these, too.)

This month Yale started waiving undergraduate tuition for students from families earning under $200,000 a year. Free college at Yale.

They further announced that the full cost of attendance—housing, meals, the whole package—will disappear for families earning under $100,000. For the first time, a majority of American families with scholarly kids can look at Yale and think, well why not?

That one word changes things. It changes who raises their hand in high school. Who feels empowered. Who even lets the idea enter their imagination that they might belong in a place long assumed to be reserved for those other kids, whoever they are.

Endowment at great schools and colleges is often thought of vaguely as some kind of financial engine. But at our recent Grauer Board of Trustees retreat, trustee Will Yankus described it as a “forest.” I think Will has passed through our campus entry “Tolerance Gateway” enough times to understand inclusion and the beautiful sacrifice that can entail.

A forest—meant to endure, and at its best—is not planted to be harvested once, or clearcut. It is tended. Walked. Cared for so that each generation finds shade there. We keep it well pruned and then leave it standing to grow even healthier for the next generation. A great endowment works like that when it is at its best—it’s living capital, not hoarded wealth. It is something meant to carry purpose forward rather than simply accumulate numbers that give the finance committee their morning coffee buzz, or, more commonly, be drained into someone’s pet project, a high-tech stadium jumbotron—impressive for a season, irrelevant a decade later.

Another way to think of endowment is the way a parent chooses between buying a child another stack of clothes for a birthday versus putting that same money into a college fund. One is immediately useful, fun, and quickly outgrown. The other invisibly compounds and opens doors years later. Psychologists call this deferred gratification, one of the clearest, healthiest markers of self-regulation and long-term thinking. A school’s endowment works similarly, except instead of paying out once, like for college, it pays out carefully and repeatedly, year after year, for generations of students the original donors will never meet. Forever.

The American middle class, which has long been the bridge between aspiration and access, is thinning—just watch the news. (No, don’t.) When that bridge weakens, institutions that do nothing to counter the drift can begin to grow into something they never set out to be: places of inherited advantage instead of cultivated talent. This is rarely our moral weakness. It is structural. Tuition, left alone, selects relentlessly and without apology.

Yale’s expansion of financial aid suggests an awareness of this gravity. The deeper opportunity, though, is not only in their policy announcement but in how the endowment itself is understood—how it is governed and aligned with long-term intended purpose (aka: leadership).

This matters far beyond elite universities. We can read about it in the Sermon on the Mount. (Yes, do.) Socking away endowment funds to widen access is one of the surest ways to ensure legitimacy in a time when inequality is widening in plain sight, and in public policymaking.

Small schools—independent, public, charter, microschools, learning pods—often hear news like Yale’s and they may shrug. Different world, different scale. They do not have billions tucked away. They operate close to the margin. Enrollment and tuition can feel like oxygen levels. But the forest metaphor holds no matter the size of that forest.

Every great school, large or small, lives inside an ecosystem of trust, access, and faith. A modest reserve fund, a scholarship account, a piece of land held debt-free, a donor’s inspired and very personal commitment before the tears of joy of the development office and school head—these are micro-forests. They protect survival. And they can be treated as living capital tied to mission, as they protect identity and the values we want to live out our days by.

Small schools face the same pull Yale faces, often more on front lines. Without intention and sacrifice, we can drift toward serving only families who can pay comfortably. Over time, however deserving, the student body narrows, the range thins, and the campus begins to lose the friction and vitality that come from the diverse talent, commitment, background, and viewpoint that “is” their local community. The loss is not felt right away in the budget. If you stay attuned, you’ll notice it earlier as a cultural and moral shift in the classroom and on the quad.

Yale’s example is a great one, but this is a broader trend:

• Princeton University expanded aid so most families under $150K are funded in full by endowment returns.

• Brown University reported record endowment support to students exceeding $350M in a single year for scholarships, faculty, and programs.

• Wesleyan University now directs over $90M annually to financial aid and has eliminated loans from undergraduate packages--sustained by endowment growth.

• Roanoke College launched a campaign to triple its endowment in five years to broaden and stabilize access and scholarships.

• MacKenzie Scott’s recent amazing gifts injected multi-million-dollar unrestricted endowment funds into several historically Black colleges and the United Negro College Fund network.

• University of Arkansas–Little Rock created a new endowed scholarship program through a $7.5M gift to expand access.

•  Harvard (FAS) announced a $50M endowed fund dedicated to Ph.D. fellowships and research support.

Endowment funds faculty, too, sharing with families the growing responsibility for supporting great faculty as they devote their lives to our kids. We’ve all heard of the “endowed faculty chair” and this is a permanent partner in a teacher’s salary—one donor’s gift silently covering part of salaries every year, in perpetuity.

In sum, access to a great school does not happen by accident. It is envisioned, designed, resourced, and often fought for as people push for their latest interests. An endowment, in the billions or in the thousands, exists not just to steady our budgets but to widen the gateway across generations. It’s the Tolerance Gateway.

A forest that is never thinned grows brittle. A school that serves only those already inside slowly turns into a preserve instead of a commons. But that’s it for metaphors: access to a great school is real and generationally lifechanging.

Yale’s recent move is a reminder that the future of education will not be decided by prestige or cool programs, not even by good teaching alone, and not by maximizing tuition income, either. Whether we are stewarding gigantic endowments or just a fist full of scholarship dollars, the question is the same: are we tending capital only to protect the school right now, or are we tending it to keep the ecosystem of our alma mater vital and resonant and proud even when we’re gone?

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