Thread by @andyhre

Apparently, everyone thinks I should speak to whether Stanford cutting sports makes economic sense or not.

Stanford is not int he category of the schools I normally assess, like AKron, with chronic declining enrollment and a lack of willing customers to fill the slots. (1/x)

If Stanford cuts a sport, it is in a position to fill those classroom slots with willing, paying customers. Conversely if it keeps a sport, it has to say no to those customers. That's not true at Akron.

But... there is a big caveat to that (2/x)

as far as I understand it, every single scholarship at Stanford is fully endowed. Meaning when Stanford lets in a Women's volleyball player, it gets money from the endowment equal to the full-freight Stanford price for tuition, fees, room and board.

(3/X)

This means that if Stanford lets in a upper middle class robotics student, or a WVB athlete, Stanford gets about the same level of revenue (and costs). If they let in a lower middle class robotics student, the athlete likely brings in more cash b/c of the endowment. However
(4/X)

what I don't know is whether Stanford has the ability to repurpose those endowments if the sport is cancelled. Imagine if there is the Andy Schwarz Endowed Scholarship that provides a 50% grant-in-Aid to a member of the Sailing team, in perpetuity. (5/X)

It may be the case that as long as Stanford has a Sailing team, my endowment cannot be used for anything else, nor can Stanford touch the principle, which exists to generate earnings to cover the annual cost.

But, perhaps if the team is cancelled, the school can do that (6/X)

If that's the case, then cancelling a sport saves you the operating expenses and generates a one-time windfall as all of those endowments effective escheat to the university, swelling the general endowment..
(7/X)

Now I have no insight into how the endowments are written, since there is no Andy Schwarz Endowed Scholarship in Sailing.

But that would explain why this would make sense.

Side note: While at Stanford I took Yorkist/Tudor history from Paul Seaver. (8/X)

I learned about the religious, political, economic, and diplomatic history of England from around 1450 to 1603. (I also took Seaver's Stuart history, the sequel).

During the reign of Henry VIII, one important economic theme was the dissolution of the monasteries. (9/x)

Monasteries were endowed entities, in that they supported the needs of the monks via donations that had accumulated over time mostly in the form of land that generated rents. As Henry worked towards his own version of the Church (after his break from Rome), (10/X)

He was able to dissolve monasteries -- first the smallest ones, eventually all of them, provide a pension for the remaining life of the existing monks, and then keep the endowments of land and other property for the Crown.

(11/X)

he then sold them off to the gentry & aristocracy in part to raise ready cash and in part to get their buy-in to his version of the Reformation -- after all, you can;t really support a restoration of the Pope if you have to give back the land you bought.

But anyway
(12/X)

Without knowing more about what's going on at Stanford, I think my Stanford education gives me a strong sense that this is what's happening -- those scholarship endowments, much like the monasteries in 16th century England -- have been building up for years, and (13/X)

this is probably an easy way as unlock all of that value, while at the same time, cutting an associated expense [coaches' pay, travel, etc.]

If those scholarships can't be escheated, then I don't get it. Since I doubt they acted stupidly, I'll put my money on my theory.(14/14)