University librarian leaves $4MM to UNH, school buys video scoreboard.

[nereo]

According to the Boston Globe, Robert Morin worked for the UNH library for almost 50 years before leaving his $4MM estate to the school.

What gets me is that people describe the library as being his "whole life", yet UNH has chosen to use $1MM to buy the football team a new video-scoreboard*, $2.5MM for a new career center, and just $100k has been targeted for the actual library.

*to be fair he did seem to enjoy football.  But not as much as reading or his work at hte library, apparently.

[tonysemail]

i hope they name that stupid scoreboard after him.
a scholarship would have been a way better use for the money.

This part made me cringe.
"He lived alone, rarely bought clothes, had Fritos and soda for breakfast, drove a 1992 Plymouth, and spent spare time reading almost every book — in chronological order — that had been published in the United States from 1930 to 1938."

[Miss Piggy]

To be fair, if he wanted all or most of his money to go toward the library, he could have said so, but he didn't. He believed the school would spend his money wisely and in the best interest of students. A career center is pretty important. The scoreboard? Meh...but like you said, he did become quite a fan of football later in life, so I can see how the school reps feel justified with that decision.

[MarioMario]

He could have earmarked his money.  Otherwise you gotta trust the university to do what they think is best.

I live in Omaha and someone earmarked some money for a med school with the stipulation it had to be used for an ice skating rink.

[Lulee]

The local TV station says (http://m.wmur.com/news/librarian-leaves-4-million-to-unh/41457742) $100,000 was earmarked for the library at his request.  They say his donation will help pay for the new scoreboard, not pay for it in its entirety.  They are adding a media viewing room to the library as he apparently loved films and helping to inspire students in filmmaking.  Money is going to scholarships as well.

They did engrave a bench near the library entrance with his name to honour him.

[Sid Hoffman]

They say his donation will help pay for the new scoreboard, not pay for it in its entirety.

Are you kidding me?!  A MILLION DOLLARS wasn't even enough to fully pay for a scoreboard?  Seriously, this is where it's time to pass a law on the maximum amount public schools are allowed to charge for tuition and spend on anything that isn't directly academic.  In fact I'll go a step further and say that student loans for private schools should be outlawed as well.  You want to get kids to take out $100,000 in loans to go to a private college?  It must be classified as a personal loan, not a student loan, thus able to be discharged via bankruptcy.

The point of a university or college is to prepare you for life.  Having a billion dollar stadium does not prepare the 1% of students who are athletes for life any more effectively than a cheap field does.  There are so many stories nowadays of kids having their lives ruined by colleges that we really need to make it stop.

[2buttons]

I enjoy it when people who don't have a clue about what they are talking about express outrage on something that does not affect them at all.

Unless you are a wildcat (had to look it up) why do you care?

[nereo]

They say his donation will help pay for the new scoreboard, not pay for it in its entirety.

Are you kidding me?!  A MILLION DOLLARS wasn't even enough to fully pay for a scoreboard?  Seriously, this is where it's time to pass a law on the maximum amount public schools are allowed to charge for tuition and spend on anything that isn't directly academic.  In fact I'll go a step further and say that student loans for private schools should be outlawed as well.  You want to get kids to take out $100,000 in loans to go to a private college?  It must be classified as a personal loan, not a student loan, thus able to be discharged via bankruptcy.

Just to be clear, UNH is a state school.  Also, student loans used to be able to be discharged via bankruptcy, but that stopped when primarily medical students figured out they could declare bankruptcy right when they graduated and the bankruptcy would be off their record at about the same time they finished their residency.

I agree that we ought to tackle both the rising cost of a university education and our student loan program, but what private loan company would give a student with no collateral a loan for an education if it could be discharged through bankruptcy? As long as education costs money there will be a need for student loans.

[Pigeon]

I enjoy it when people who don't have a clue about what they are talking about express outrage on something that does not affect them at all.

Unless you are a wildcat (had to look it up) why do you care?

I am a Wildcat and I'm outraged. What a total waste.

[nereo]

I enjoy it when people who don't have a clue about what they are talking about express outrage on something that does not affect them at all.

Unless you are a wildcat (had to look it up) why do you care?

I am a Wildcat and I'm outraged. What a total waste.

As a Wildcat, did you know Mr Morin?  Any stories about him?

[Sid Hoffman]

I agree that we ought to tackle both the rising cost of a university education and our student loan program, but what private loan company would give a student with no collateral a loan for an education if it could be discharged through bankruptcy? As long as education costs money there will be a need for student loans.

Take a closer look at my proposal: no student loans for private schools.  If you can't afford to go to private school and nobody will give you a personal loan and you can't get in on a scholarship, then you go to state school.  The best & brightest will still get in to private schools via merit scholarships or because mommy & daddy paid the bill for them or co-signed on their personal loans.  I want to stop private schools from preying on the truly average students who think that a private school will magically give them a 4x better education because it costs 4x more.  The recent closure of (private college) ITT Tech is just another example of why.

[nereo]

I agree that we ought to tackle both the rising cost of a university education and our student loan program, but what private loan company would give a student with no collateral a loan for an education if it could be discharged through bankruptcy? As long as education costs money there will be a need for student loans.

Take a closer look at my proposal: no student loans for private schools.  If you can't afford to go to private school and nobody will give you a personal loan and you can't get in on a scholarship, then you go to state school.  The best & brightest will still get in to private schools via merit scholarships or because mommy & daddy paid the bill for them or co-signed on their personal loans.  I want to stop private schools from preying on the truly average students who think that a private school will magically give them a 4x better education because it costs 4x more.  The recent closure of (private college) ITT Tech is just another example of why.

Ok, but I disagree with your proposal for no student loans for private schools even more. By and large student loans made to individuals who go to 4 year private schools ahve the lowest default rates (around 7%).  The highest? For-profit universities and public two year programs. 
Perhaps worse, banning potential students from attending a private institution just widens the gap between the wealthy and the working classes.

[Pigeon]

I enjoy it when people who don't have a clue about what they are talking about express outrage on something that does not affect them at all.

Unless you are a wildcat (had to look it up) why do you care?

I am a Wildcat and I'm outraged. What a total waste.

As a Wildcat, did you know Mr Morin?  Any stories about him?

Sadly, no.  I used a branch library for my major.

[Cycling Stache]

So, interesting fact.  I used to work in the development (fundraising) office of a major university.  Donations across the board--for athletic and non-athletic purposes--increased substantially when the football team did well.  You can complain about how irrational it may be, but athletic success often drives donations.  Schools are therefore using behavioral economics to their advantage to benefit all students.  How's that for unexpected?

[bacchi]

For the big name schools, at least, the athletics department is self funded. Any money spent stupidly comes from ticket sales or TV rights. I don't know if UNH does it this way.

[flyingaway]

That is why I will never leave any money to charities or universities or hospitals. I will give money to people in need directly.

[ltt]

i hope they name that stupid scoreboard after him.
a scholarship would have been a way better use for the money.

This part made me cringe.
"He lived alone, rarely bought clothes, had Fritos and soda for breakfast, drove a 1992 Plymouth, and spent spare time reading almost every book — in chronological order — that had been published in the United States from 1930 to 1938."

What's wrong with this?  So he wasn't into clothes, liked Fritos and soda, and drove and old car.  Maybe those things really made him happy.

[2buttons]

I enjoy it when people who don't have a clue about what they are talking about express outrage on something that does not affect them at all.

Unless you are a wildcat (had to look it up) why do you care?

I am a Wildcat and I'm outraged. What a total waste.

As a Wildcat, did you know Mr Morin?  Any stories about him?

Sadly, no.  I used a branch library for my major.

So if you were at UNH Manchester, does that mean you actually haven't visited the library in Durham? I suggest you google image the library.

[Pigeon]

I enjoy it when people who don't have a clue about what they are talking about express outrage on something that does not affect them at all.

Unless you are a wildcat (had to look it up) why do you care?

I am a Wildcat and I'm outraged. What a total waste.

As a Wildcat, did you know Mr Morin?  Any stories about him?

Sadly, no.  I used a branch library for my major.

So if you were at UNH Manchester, does that mean you actually haven't visited the library in Durham? I suggest you google image the library.

No, I was in Durham.  There are multiple libraries on campus.  I was very rarely in the Dimond Library.

[tonysemail]

What's wrong with this?  So he wasn't into clothes, liked Fritos and soda, and drove and old car.  Maybe those things really made him happy.

i guess I'm judgmental about a lot of things.
the quest to read every book published in the 30's sounds incredibly OCD to me.
I mean - what's wrong with books published after 1938?

[nereo]

What's wrong with this?  So he wasn't into clothes, liked Fritos and soda, and drove and old car.  Maybe those things really made him happy.

i guess I'm judgmental about a lot of things.
the quest to read every book published in the 30's sounds incredibly OCD to me.
I mean - what's wrong with books published after 1938?

Nothing.  But he died before he could get past 1938. In some ways I envy this approach.  With the exponential growth in publishing it would be impossible for a person to read everything published in just a single year nowadays over an entire lifetime, but he read 9 years of books. That could give a person an incredible grasp of how people actually though in the 1930s.

I imagine this could be modified to be a fun* and informative task for history students.  As an example of someone studying the leadup to WWII: read every single article published in the sunday edition of the NY Times from 1932-1941. Someone could do that in under a year and learn not about not just the issues that turned out to be very important, but also all the things people fretted about that turned out not matter very much.

*yes, I may have a different idea of what "fun" is. We were given a similar task during my Msc to read every article from a year of our choice in a major journal. As I did the assignment a much bigger picture started to form of how our approach to science today has shifted.

[Sid Hoffman]

The highest? For-profit universities and public two year programs.

OK, we are apparently using different language.  In my region, public = government, and private = for-profit.  You just said the highest default rate is for-profit universities, which is exactly what I want to stop from happening.  I'm not familiar with public two-year outside of community college.  In my region, tuition is $1600 per semester for community college.  I don't know how anyone would get in $100k of debt at $1600/semester, but OK.

[nereo]

The highest? For-profit universities and public two year programs.

OK, we are apparently using different language.  In my region, public = government, and private = for-profit.  You just said the highest default rate is for-profit universities, which is exactly what I want to stop from happening.  I'm not familiar with public two-year outside of community college.  In my region, tuition is $1600 per semester for community college.  I don't know how anyone would get in $100k of debt at $1600/semester, but OK.

Ah, ok.  In academia there's a distinction between universities that are funded directly with state tax money and are beholden to specific laws of the state ("Public"), those that are privately held, often have an endowment but fit federal non-profit guidelines ("private") and those that are specifically set up to earn money for their founders/shareholders ("for-profit").  Two-year schools are often referred to as "community college" and often allow open enrollment for anyone residing in the state.
What's lost in the 'student-loan' debate is that the bulk of student loan default comes from people who attend for-profit colleges and universities (which, not-coincidentially, also produce students with much lower earning potential than those that graduate from 4-year public or private schools).

Put another way, there's very little problem of student loan defaults from schools like Harvard or Yale, even though students can wrack up $100k in debt, which admittedly is a different kind of problem.  >>90% of those graduates can pay back those loans on time.
as examples:
Well known public universities: The University of California system (eg. Berkeley, UCLA, UCSC, etc), UNH, Ohio State, Texas A&M, Penn State, Michigan State...

Well know private universities: Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Northeastern, NYU, Tufts, ...

Well known for-profit universities: University of Phoenix, DeVry, Staryer...

[EnjoyIt]

$1 million+ for a score board.  Just an insane waste of money.
as if a simple dot-matrix type scoreboard doesn't do an adequate job.  Only way I see it reasonable is if the expensive scoreboard is used to display paid adds that eventually have the board pay for itself.

[oldtoyota]

What's wrong with this?  So he wasn't into clothes, liked Fritos and soda, and drove and old car.  Maybe those things really made him happy.

i guess I'm judgmental about a lot of things.
the quest to read every book published in the 30's sounds incredibly OCD to me.
I mean - what's wrong with books published after 1938?

I take a different view. I think it's cool he read every book between 1930-38 in order of publication date. I love it when people are weird that way.

[Papa Mustache]

$1 million+ for a score board.  Just an insane waste of money.
as if a simple dot-matrix type scoreboard doesn't do an adequate job.  Only way I see it reasonable is if the expensive scoreboard is used to display paid adds that eventually have the board pay for itself.

Absolutely - just give the old one a paint job and spring for some new light bulbs. The amount of $$$ spent on athletics departments is just absurd.

If I ever left $4M to a school - its going on academics - though I know they can be just as wasteful too.

[Pigeon]

You can actually be pretty specific about what you use the money for.  It's not what the school wants you to do, but you can.  I have to use the interest generated by an endowment to buy stuff for programs we no longer even offer.

[EnjoyIt]

$1 million+ for a score board.  Just an insane waste of money.
as if a simple dot-matrix type scoreboard doesn't do an adequate job.  Only way I see it reasonable is if the expensive scoreboard is used to display paid adds that eventually have the board pay for itself.

Absolutely - just give the old one a paint job and spring for some new light bulbs. The amount of $$$ spent on athletics departments is just absurd.

If I ever left $4M to a school - its going on academics - though I know they can be just as wasteful too.

In the town north of me the high school just spent over $1 million on a big screen and astroturf. And this is not some well to do community.  It is complete bullshit that school are overcrowded, teachers get paid little and this is where the tax dollars go.  Our society is so screwed up.

[Boxcat]

I went to ASU, the football coach made $3 million in 2015 and had a potential bonus for $700,000. The top paid college football coach in the U.S. made $7.2 million last year. How is this not a minimum wage job? Why are sports even connected to academic institutes? The US has very weird priorities. Sure a few of the programs manage to turn a profit or break even, but the vast majority are tax-payer funded sinkholes making profits for private companies.

[maustache]

On another site they mentioned that the school could earn a lot more revenue from advertising on the scoreboard, so it's an investment.

[nobodyspecial]

Why are sports even connected to academic institutes?

Because it's the only way you can avoid paying the players - damn 13th amendment.

[HomeSweetLab]

On another site they mentioned that the school could earn a lot more revenue from advertising on the scoreboard, so it's an investment.

Exactly.

A lot of people on here don't understand the economics of American college football. As a graduate of a school with a good football program (Virginia Tech), I have no issues with the school investing money in the program, because the football program earns WAY more in revenues than we sink into it (despite the seemingly constant upgrades to the stadium and training facilities).

College football is a $10 billion a year business, and a vast majority of the programs out there are in the green. Sure, there are a few programs that are money sinks in the short term, but those are usually the subject of budget cuts and/or re-organizations to bring them back to profitability. People seem to forget that colleges are businesses. Non-profit businesses mind you, but businesses nonetheless. They wouldn't invest in something if they didn't think they would get a net positive return on that investment.

Now, the ethics of exploiting these athletes as unpaid labor or the debate on whether colleges should be allowed to have athletic programs in the first place are separate issues entirely, but to say that this scoreboard money was "wasted" is simply untrue given the current profitability of college football programs.

[Boxcat]

This is a pretty good article debunking the myth that college football is profitable. http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-football-profitable/

TL;DR: "even within the so-called top tier, 82% of college football teams actually take away money from the university’s budget, rather than generate net revenue."

[Papa Mustache]

A lot of people on here don't understand the economics of American college football. As a graduate of a school with a good football program (Virginia Tech), I have no issues with the school investing money in the program, because the football program earns WAY more in revenues than we sink into it (despite the seemingly constant upgrades to the stadium and training facilities).

Then they shouldn't need $1M from the librarian's donation. Let them build up their own pot of cash to sustain themselves. I am not a fan of expensive university sporting programs. Love intramural sports played on some patch of grass somewhere though.

[nobodyspecial]

Then they shouldn't need $1M from the librarian's donation. Let them build up their own pot of cash to sustain themselves.

They wouldn't need to, venture capital would be happy to invest in such a profitable activity