Speaker 1: Pushkin. In Glassboro, New Jersey, a little community half an
Speaker 1: hour south of Philadelphia, there's a statue right by the
Speaker 1: road as you drive into town. It's of a man
Speaker 1: named Henry Rowan. He liked to be called Hank. Whenever
Speaker 1: Hank Roan came to Glassboro, he was mobbed like a
Speaker 1: rock star, which probably embarrassed him because he wasn't given
Speaker 1: to those kinds of displays. When Hank Rowan died in
Speaker 1: December of twenty fifteen, there was a huge memorial service.
Speaker 1: Then in the evening, students from the local college gathered
Speaker 1: around his statue, holding candles and sang for him as
Speaker 1: earnestly as only college kids can. My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked
Speaker 1: and misunderstood. This episode is my eulogy for Hank Rowan.
Speaker 1: I never met him, but he's a hero of mine.
Speaker 1: I want to understand why he didn't become everyone's hero.
Speaker 1: Why Hank Rowan's example didn't spread beyond glass Grown, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: He was six foot one or so, not not a
Speaker 1: huge football player size, and you know, one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty pounds, no thin but not skinny and had a
Speaker 1: loud voice, strong presence, and yeah he was. It was
Speaker 1: his management style, like benevolent dictator. I think that's Rowan's daughter,
Speaker 1: Jinny Smith. She now runs the company her father started
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three. It's called Inductotherm. It's right off
Speaker 1: the New Jersey Turnpike. They make industrial furnaces from melting metal.
Speaker 1: He started the company basically in our garage and then
Speaker 1: he sold his first job to the Mint, which was
Speaker 1: kind of fun, and then the second job to Ge
Speaker 1: and then the furnaces just got bigger and bigger. Now
Speaker 1: some of them are fifty tons. They're just huge. And
Speaker 1: kept branching out and acquired some companies and it kind
Speaker 1: of it grew like topsy. But he also worked very,
Speaker 1: very hard at it and hired good people. Rowan built
Speaker 1: in Ducto them into a multinational corporation, thousands of employees
Speaker 1: around the world, and he became a very wealthy man,
Speaker 1: although you wouldn't have known it. You know, he run
Speaker 1: around in scuff shoes and trials, not worried about that.
Speaker 1: He didn't care how he dressed or looked. Roan was
Speaker 1: an engineer race sailboats, flu planes bleed in hard work,
Speaker 1: free enterprise. But you couldn't get him to buy a
Speaker 1: fancy car. He was a nash rambler guy in the
Speaker 1: early days, and he pooh pooed Mercedes because Mercedes wasn't
Speaker 1: one of our customers. What did he drive? Sort of
Speaker 1: nearly near He drove Ozmo bills and Buicks and finally
Speaker 1: the company here in city drive a Lincoln. I drove
Speaker 1: it into the ground just about. Oh. I had a
Speaker 1: Cadillac once, but he towed his boots with that too,
Speaker 1: because it had a bigger engine. You know, none of
Speaker 1: us drive around a wave with people stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Almost thirty years ago, Hank Rowan became friends with a
Speaker 1: man named phil to Mania Too. Manya was head of
Speaker 1: development for the local college, Glassborough State, just down the road,
Speaker 1: a little university started back in the nineteen twenties on
Speaker 1: twenty five acres too. Many a would drop by and
Speaker 1: see Rowan on his way up to Trenton. Everyone involved
Speaker 1: with Glassborough and Rowan has their own version of this story,
Speaker 1: but here's how Rowan remembered it in an interview he
Speaker 1: gave a few years before he died. It's with Don Ferrish.
Speaker 1: She was the former president of Glassborough State. He asked
Speaker 1: Rowan how he first got involved with the college. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we blame it all on Phil too media,
Speaker 1: because he came to see me and asked if I
Speaker 1: might make a donation to the scholarship fund of fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Well that sounded easy, fifteen hundred hundreds, So
Speaker 1: we gave him fifteen hundred dollars. And you know what
Speaker 1: he came back to many I wanted Rowan to give
Speaker 1: money to the business school, which was pretty dilapidated. So
Speaker 1: he pushed that for a while and I said, Phil,
Speaker 1: I have zero interest in your school of business. What
Speaker 1: this world needs is more engineering, how to make things
Speaker 1: we have to produce? And Phil, what would you do
Speaker 1: with one hundred million dollars? And herself off the chair?
Speaker 1: But that's how we got to that level, and what's
Speaker 1: the beginning. So you're the that suggested one hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars figure you were talking about? Can I see? This
Speaker 1: is nineteen ninety two, a generation ago. Almost nobody gave
Speaker 1: donations of one hundred million dollars. Back then, this was
Speaker 1: unheard of money. Roland's gift made headlines around the country.
Speaker 1: He set a new standard. Did you think it changed
Speaker 1: the world? Them? Ready? At Roland's memorial service filled too many,
Speaker 1: it gets up and says, I think accurately that Roan
Speaker 1: is the person who triggered what has become one of
Speaker 1: the greatest explosions in educational philanthropy since the days of
Speaker 1: Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefellers. From ju Why of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two until the end of that decade, twenty gifts
Speaker 1: twenty gifts of one hundred million dollars of you were
Speaker 1: given out in this country. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Speaker 1: As of right now spring of twenty sixteen, we're up
Speaker 1: to eighty seven gifts of one hundred million dollars or
Speaker 1: more to higher education. So everyone followed Rowan's lead, except
Speaker 1: not really. Rowan gave his money to Glasborough State College,
Speaker 1: a public university in a sleepy little town in South
Speaker 1: Jersey that no one had ever heard of. The college
Speaker 1: was close to broke at the time. They had an
Speaker 1: endowment of seven hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars. But
Speaker 1: the people who followed Hank Rowan, who were inspired by
Speaker 1: the size of his donation, almost all of them gave
Speaker 1: money to wealthy, prestigious schools. Let me just read to
Speaker 1: you the names of some of the educational institutions that
Speaker 1: had received the largest donations in American history. Ready, in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, the billionaire co founder of Nike, Phil Knight,
Speaker 1: pledged half a billion to the Oregon Health and Science
Speaker 1: University in Portland, Okay. Not the most prestigious institution in America.
Speaker 1: But wait, then come three four hundred million dollar donations.
Speaker 1: The first is the millionaire John Klugey's gift to Columbia
Speaker 1: University in two thousand and seven. The second is the
Speaker 1: hedge fund manager John Paulson's gift to Harvard University in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. The third is Phil Knight's gift to Stanford
Speaker 1: University in twenty sixteen. And after that, in order, here
Speaker 1: are the universities that get the biggest donations. JOHNS. Hopkins,
Speaker 1: Harvard again, University of Chicago, Princeton, Tufts, Carnegie, Mellon, Cornell, Yale, Penn, Claremont, McKenna,
Speaker 1: Columbia again, Baylor, USC Columbia third time, Michigan, University of California, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: I could go on if you want, through all eighty seven,
Speaker 1: but Basically, we're talking about the same wealthy, elite schools
Speaker 1: getting the biggest donations again and again. Hank Rowan did
Speaker 1: something unprecedented, and nobody followed him. This episode is the
Speaker 1: third in my three part revisionist history miniseries re examining
Speaker 1: the promise of higher education. The first installment was about
Speaker 1: why the educational system struggles to find talented low income students.
Speaker 1: The second episode was a comparison of Vasser in Bodin
Speaker 1: and why it's so difficult for some colleges to find
Speaker 1: the money for financial aid. But today I want to
Speaker 1: talk about educational philanthropy, which I think is an issue
Speaker 1: that doesn't get talked about early enough. Higher education in
Speaker 1: the United States runs on philanthropy. There are almost no
Speaker 1: schools that can pay their bills just on the strength
Speaker 1: of students tuition. Those days are over. Philanthropy is what
Speaker 1: makes the wheels turn. But there's a problem. A lot
Speaker 1: of that philanthropy doesn't make any sense. It's going to
Speaker 1: the wrong places for the wrong reasons. Those of you
Speaker 1: who follow me on Twitter will know that I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with this issue. After John Paulson gave his four hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars to Harvard and fifteen I had a kind
Speaker 1: of Twitter melt down, sending tweet after tweet, including it
Speaker 1: came down to helping the poor or giving the world's
Speaker 1: richest university four undred million dollars. It doesn't need wise choice, John,
Speaker 1: And then if billionaires don't step up, Harvard will soon
Speaker 1: be down to its last thirty billion. Then when Phil
Speaker 1: Knight gave four undred million dollars to Stanford, I got
Speaker 1: called up for comment by The New York Times. I
Speaker 1: said that Stamford was part of a crazy arms race
Speaker 1: and ought to cut its endowment in half and give
Speaker 1: the balance to schools that actually need the money. The
Speaker 1: next day, I got an email from the President of Stanford,
Speaker 1: John Hennessey. He wanted to get together and convince me
Speaker 1: I was wrong. So I talked to him, and we'll
Speaker 1: get to that conversation in a minute. For now, I
Speaker 1: will only say that I was completely baffled by my
Speaker 1: talk with Hennessey. It was as if he and I
Speaker 1: were speaking different languages. I understand the people who give
Speaker 1: money to those who need money, the people who give
Speaker 1: money to the those who already have all the money
Speaker 1: they need. I don't understand that what are they thinking.
Speaker 1: Let me run an idea by you, which I think
Speaker 1: helps to frame this question. It has to do with soccer, actually,
Speaker 1: the difference between soccer and basketball. This idea comes from
Speaker 1: two economists named David Sally and Chris Anderson, who wrote
Speaker 1: a really great book a couple of years ago about
Speaker 1: soccer called The Numbers Game. One of the questions they
Speaker 1: asked was what matters more if you want to build
Speaker 1: a great soccer team, how good your best player is
Speaker 1: or how good your worst player is? And their answer was,
Speaker 1: in soccer, what matters is how good your worst player is.
Speaker 1: Soccer is a game where if you get a single goal,
Speaker 1: if you just happen to be lucky, that goal may
Speaker 1: hold up. That's David Sally, and so mistakes turn out
Speaker 1: to be a very important part of soccer is a
Speaker 1: team sport that leads you to think about well, mistakes
Speaker 1: more often happen or more often produced by weaker players
Speaker 1: on the pitch. Sally's argument goes like this, a soccer
Speaker 1: team has eleven players on the field at any one time.
Speaker 1: Suppose one is a superstar, and your worst player is
Speaker 1: maybe only forty five percent as good as a superstar.
Speaker 1: Because Soccer is a sport where everyone on the field
Speaker 1: depends on everyone else. That forty five percent player can
Speaker 1: make one mistake and completely negate the skill of the
Speaker 1: best player. You can have eight beautiful passes in a row,
Speaker 1: but if your worst player, you're forty five percent player,
Speaker 1: botches the ninth then all the previous eight beautiful passes
Speaker 1: are all wasted. That's right, And because of the nature
Speaker 1: of soccer, those eight beautiful passes may have only increased
Speaker 1: your likelihood of victory by a small percent, but then
Speaker 1: it goes right back to zero because somebody turns the
Speaker 1: ball over. Sally and Anderson did a statistical analysis. They
Speaker 1: looked at the top soccer clubs in Europe and showed
Speaker 1: that if those teams upgraded their poorest players instead of
Speaker 1: their best players, they would score more goals and win
Speaker 1: more games a lot more. Soccer is a weak link game. Yes,
Speaker 1: having a better superstar was of course better, but actually
Speaker 1: having a better end of the bench or eleventh guy
Speaker 1: on the pitch was actually more influential to whether won
Speaker 1: matches or not, which would be the exact opposite of basketball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: basketball is probably the opposite end of the continuum from
Speaker 1: if you think about. Soccer is maybe the weakest link sport.
Speaker 1: Basketball is probably the most superstar different team sport that
Speaker 1: we have. Even the greatest basketball teams often have won,
Speaker 1: and sometimes even two players who are barely better than mediocre.
Speaker 1: What matters in basketball is not how good your fifth
Speaker 1: player is, It's how good your superstar is. It's a
Speaker 1: strong link game. Think about Lionel Messi, maybe the greatest
Speaker 1: soccer player of his generation, versus Michael Jordan, the greatest
Speaker 1: basketball player of his generation. Jordan could do on a
Speaker 1: basketball court was Jordan could guarantee or virtually guarantee that
Speaker 1: he could get the ball. You couldn't really stop him, right.
Speaker 1: He could go to the backcourt, pick up the ball.
Speaker 1: He could dribble it forward. He could break double teams.
Speaker 1: You could try to send three guys at him, but
Speaker 1: then you're really you're really opening yourself up. He could
Speaker 1: go and get a shot. Leo Messi is so good
Speaker 1: that sometimes fun rare times where in fact he can
Speaker 1: dribble the length of the pitch. But the fact is
Speaker 1: that in most instances he really can't. He needs to
Speaker 1: be He needs those eight beautiful passes to set him
Speaker 1: up and then he could do something amazingly transcendent with it.
Speaker 1: I think the weak link strong link distinction is incredibly
Speaker 1: useful in making sense of certain kinds of problems. Suppose
Speaker 1: I said to you, for example, here's fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Spend it in a way that makes air travel in
Speaker 1: the United States more efficient. The last thing you would
Speaker 1: do is to go to Denver, which has that big,
Speaker 1: gorgeous new airport, and make it even bigger and even
Speaker 1: more gorgeous. No, you go to the worst and most
Speaker 1: crowded airports in a country, LaGuardia, Newark, Kennedy, and make
Speaker 1: them better. Because every single day, delays at Newark and
Speaker 1: LaGuardia and Kennedy ripple across the country and delay planes everywhere.
Speaker 1: You'd spend all fifty billion dollars in New York. If
Speaker 1: you do that, you're essentially saying air travel in the
Speaker 1: United States is a weak link problem. We're limited by
Speaker 1: how good our appalling New York airports are more than
Speaker 1: by how good our best airports are. Here's another example.
Speaker 1: One of the great puzzles of the Industrial Revolution is
Speaker 1: why it began in England, why not France or Germany.
Speaker 1: One theory is that Britain was lucky enough to have
Speaker 1: more geniuses than anyone else, like James Watt who invents
Speaker 1: the steam engine. But there's an economist named Joel Moker
Speaker 1: who makes a really compelling argument that England's is that
Speaker 1: it had way more craftsmen and skilled engineers and experienced
Speaker 1: in mechanically minded backyard tinkerers than anyone else. Those were
Speaker 1: the people who are able to take those inventions and
Speaker 1: perfect them and make them useful. Moker is saying that
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution was a weak link phenomenon, not a
Speaker 1: strong link phenomenon, and because Britain had more craftsmen than
Speaker 1: France or Germany, that gave Britain a huge advantage. So
Speaker 1: what's Hank Rowan. Hank Roan is a weak link guy.
Speaker 1: He wants to make a difference to make his country
Speaker 1: a better place, and he thinks the best way to
Speaker 1: do that is to improve the forty five percent player,
Speaker 1: not the superstar. He thinks America is soccer, not basketball.
Speaker 1: You're a graduate of MIT. Right here he is again
Speaker 1: in the interview with Don Ferish of Glassborough State. Now,
Speaker 1: I would assume that MIT at that time would have
Speaker 1: been interested in receiving a gift of that size from you,
Speaker 1: did you did you think about giving it to that university?
Speaker 1: You know? Okay, they were at the time trying to
Speaker 1: raise seven hundred and fifty million dollars, and my little
Speaker 1: hunter Man wouldn't have made hardly any immage at all,
Speaker 1: hardly any difference at all. That's David Sally's point about soccer.
Speaker 1: Upgrading the superstar doesn't help as much as upgrading the
Speaker 1: worst player. Here's Hank Rowan's daughter Jinny again. Basically, he
Speaker 1: said mt had the greatest engineering school bar none. He
Speaker 1: said it was the best education he could ever imagine.
Speaker 1: And he said, I'm sure they would do good things
Speaker 1: with my money, they'd build a building or do something positive.
Speaker 1: But he said it wouldn't make the difference that it's
Speaker 1: going to make down here. He said, I enjoy making
Speaker 1: a difference in this world. So he funds an engineering
Speaker 1: school in Glassboro. It's not the best or the fancy
Speaker 1: engineering school in the country, but it's not supposed to be.
Speaker 1: So it's one one four story buildings at fours, at
Speaker 1: three it's three story building, and then it has two
Speaker 1: wings to end these labs, we'll go walked down. I
Speaker 1: went for a tour with Joe Cardona, the university's head
Speaker 1: of PR. You know, we're in a state institution, so
Speaker 1: a building like this was like wow, whiz bang. You know,
Speaker 1: look it's an engineering building and so here, why don't
Speaker 1: we just walk down the holidawn Yeah. The school was
Speaker 1: built in the mid nineteen nineties for five hundred students.
Speaker 1: They've now crammed seven hundred and fifty into the building
Speaker 1: while they wait for a new annex to be finished
Speaker 1: next door. Eventually they want to double the school's size.
Speaker 1: The point is not to be more exclusive, it's to
Speaker 1: get bigger to serve more students. Cardona and I stopped
Speaker 1: by a lab where a group of students were working
Speaker 1: on a Baja car, basically a home engineer dune buggy
Speaker 1: that will race against other engineering schools on an endurance course.
Speaker 1: So we got some aircraft grade aluminum. We have a
Speaker 1: two access water jack cutter that can cut out profiles,
Speaker 1: and we design a part that's bolted together that way.
Speaker 1: It's nice and strong and they're granted bolt but if
Speaker 1: it does break, you can replace individual pieces without having
Speaker 1: to make a whole new assembly. The four students I
Speaker 1: meet Matt, John Owen, and Kyle all grew up around here.
Speaker 1: Are most of the people students in the engineering school
Speaker 1: from New Jersey? I would say, yeah, yeah. Net tuition
Speaker 1: in state is about nine thousand dollars a year, which
Speaker 1: is pretty reasonable for an engineering school. Ninety five percent
Speaker 1: get jobs in engineering when they graduate, and they really
Speaker 1: want to do what I called a blue collar research,
Speaker 1: research that is practical that people can see the tangible
Speaker 1: result of Ali Hushman, the university's president. He's an immigrant
Speaker 1: from Iran. He grew up in a slum in Tehran,
Speaker 1: fifth in a family of ten. People used to ask
Speaker 1: me to compare that said, the best comparison would be
Speaker 1: to tell you, if you have seen slum Dog Millionaire,
Speaker 1: you look at that this phone was twice as hard
Speaker 1: and tough. Yes, we're a very close family, but very poor.
Speaker 1: I mean poor to the extent that you would walk
Speaker 1: in the streets without shoes. Hushman runs marathons, which is
Speaker 1: kind of what you'd expect, right for someone who made
Speaker 1: it out of the slums of Tehran, A typical student
Speaker 1: at the engineering school where they from. Can you give
Speaker 1: me a kind of profile of a profile of a
Speaker 1: kid from engineering. Your father is a you know, fireman,
Speaker 1: and a mom is a teacher. The kid has been
Speaker 1: going to a public school. He's from fourteen miles from here,
Speaker 1: and he's just a brilliant young men or woman gone
Speaker 1: through public school and got great schools and very much focused.
Speaker 1: He's you another word, Yes, yes, school full of alli. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the beauty of it, Malcolm. That's why I
Speaker 1: say it's a blue collar university. Now I'm convinced by
Speaker 1: Ali Hushmun and by Hank Rowan. I think American society
Speaker 1: really is soccer. We're so interdependent and we need so
Speaker 1: many perfect passes to score a goal that our challenges
Speaker 1: are weak link, not strong link. What matters is how
Speaker 1: good our eleventh player is, not our first. We're in
Speaker 1: a second industrial Revolution, and the lesson of this one
Speaker 1: isn't any different from the lesson of the last one.
Speaker 1: But it's really hard to get people to accept weak
Speaker 1: link arguments. David Sally, the economist who studied soccer, says
Speaker 1: he'll go to some billionaire oligarch who owns an English
Speaker 1: Premier League team and say, don't spend your eighty million
Speaker 1: pounds on one superstar player spend it on four pretty
Speaker 1: good players at twenty million pounds each, but the oligarch
Speaker 1: doesn't want to hear that. If the oligarch is only
Speaker 1: worried about winning soccer matches, I can sell that that's believable.
Speaker 1: Oligarchs by teams for many other reasons, including wanting to
Speaker 1: hang out with really good looking soccer strikers and wanting
Speaker 1: to sell a lot of shirts. A week lined strategy
Speaker 1: is not going to be the most glamorous thing, and
Speaker 1: that's the problem. Superstars are glamorous. Nobel Prize winners are glamorous.
Speaker 1: Regional universities in rural South Jersey and solid capable midfielders
Speaker 1: are not. What people remember are the unbelievably beautiful goals.
Speaker 1: It's a brilliant run for messing goals. They may not
Speaker 1: realize that the seven, maybe less glamorous passes that's set
Speaker 1: up that eighth beautiful through ball were maybe arguably just
Speaker 1: as important, but they were much more mundane and they
Speaker 1: just involved simple movement to open spaces, and people don't
Speaker 1: adequately value that. When we asked ourselves the question, what
Speaker 1: could Stanford do to make a better contribution to the world,
Speaker 1: we quickly converged on building a scholarship program that would
Speaker 1: bring the most talented students and prepare them to be
Speaker 1: leaders in the world, to lead on attacking the important problem.
Speaker 1: John Hennessy, president of Stanford University since two thousand, widely
Speaker 1: considered one of the greatest presidents in Stanford history. As
Speaker 1: I began to think about the end of my term
Speaker 1: as president, I started to think, was there something else
Speaker 1: perhaps we could do where we could build on everything
Speaker 1: we've put in place at Stanford and offer something that
Speaker 1: would be a great thing for the world. Not long
Speaker 1: before we talked, I took a walk across the Stanford
Speaker 1: campus and it's like entering a shrine to higher education.
Speaker 1: Everything is gleaming, gorgeous, groomed green. That's all Hennessy's work.
Speaker 1: He's transformed the school, doubled the endowment from eleven to
Speaker 1: twenty two billion dollars, made it into maybe the greatest
Speaker 1: university in the world. When we talked, he was just
Speaker 1: about to retire and thinking about his legacy. Many people,
Speaker 1: myself included, became increasingly concerned about what we saw as
Speaker 1: a void in great leadership around the world, in the
Speaker 1: public sector as well as in the private sector. Hennessy
Speaker 1: decided he wanted to start a graduate program kind of
Speaker 1: like the Rhodes Scholarship. Every year, it would bring one
Speaker 1: hundred of the brightest, most accomplished college grads from around
Speaker 1: the world to Stanford and let them apply their minds
Speaker 1: to the problems of the world. He goes to his deans,
Speaker 1: then his trustees. Everyone loves the idea, and then over
Speaker 1: the summer last summer, I went to Phil Knight and
Speaker 1: explained the idea to him, and he was enthusiastic about
Speaker 1: it and came back a month later and said he'd
Speaker 1: help us make it happen. Remember, Phil Knight is the
Speaker 1: co founder of Nike, a billionaire many times over, and
Speaker 1: a serious philanthropist. How did you pick Phil Knight as
Speaker 1: someone to approach? Was he the first person you approached?
Speaker 1: I knew Phil had been concerned about leadership globally. He
Speaker 1: and I had had a good working relationship. So he
Speaker 1: ends up giving four hundred million. How does what arrive
Speaker 1: at that number? Is that a number you suggested to him?
Speaker 1: It's roughly half. I mean where our goal is somewhere
Speaker 1: in the seven fifty to eight hundred to implement the
Speaker 1: entire program secure it permanently, and so I think in
Speaker 1: the past finding a naming gift that of that scale
Speaker 1: is probably necessary, and then you can find gifts to
Speaker 1: fill in the rest of it. It was my criticism
Speaker 1: of the phil Knight donation that led Hennessy to get
Speaker 1: in touch with me. He wanted to explain his thinking,
Speaker 1: which is John Hennessy wants to do a great thing
Speaker 1: for the world, So he sets up an eight hundred
Speaker 1: million dollar graduate program for one hundred elites to He's
Speaker 1: the anti Rowan, right, Hank Rowan wanted to start at
Speaker 1: the bottom and tries to lift as many people up
Speaker 1: as possible. Hennessy starts at the top and lavishes eight
Speaker 1: hundred million on the most exclusive group he can find.
Speaker 1: Rohan is a week Link guy. His world is soccer.
Speaker 1: Hennessy is playing basketball and he wants to focus his
Speaker 1: billions on the superstars. In the time you've been at Stanford,
Speaker 1: that went from what from eleven to twenty two? Is that? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Probably about eleven to twenty two? Right. Most of that
Speaker 1: endowment returns not mostly gifts, but there's some gifts in
Speaker 1: there too. Obviously, what is uh, how much is enough
Speaker 1: for institution, Linke Stanford, how much is enough? I think
Speaker 1: we if our ambitions don't grow, then I think you
Speaker 1: do reach a point where you have enough money, and
Speaker 1: I would hope that our ambitions for what we want
Speaker 1: to do as an institution, both and our teaching and
Speaker 1: our research grow. In other words, there really isn't such
Speaker 1: a thing at Stanford as enough money. The school's ambitions
Speaker 1: are always growing, so it's endowment should too. Just because
Speaker 1: you already have more resources than almost anyone else doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you should stop collecting even more resources. Hennessey is
Speaker 1: a hardcore strong linker. Hypothetically, if you know Bill Gates
Speaker 1: or Larry Ellison came to you and said, I'm giving
Speaker 1: you ten billion dollars, I'm retiring and I'm giving it all.
Speaker 1: My will says everything goes to Stanford. I mean, would
Speaker 1: you say we don't know, we don't need it, or
Speaker 1: would you say we can put that money to good use. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I don't think either either Larry Ellison
Speaker 1: or Bill Gates is going to give me ten billion
Speaker 1: dollars unless I tell them exactly what I'm going to
Speaker 1: do with it and how I'm going to make it
Speaker 1: a good investment. And since I know both I know
Speaker 1: both of them, I can tell you they won't they
Speaker 1: won't do it. Could you make an argument to Larry
Speaker 1: Allison as you could put if he gave you ten billion,
Speaker 1: you could put it to good use ten billion just
Speaker 1: to put us in the ballpark. Because I worry sometimes
Speaker 1: that Americans get a little jaded about big numbers. Ten
Speaker 1: billion is a few billion more than the gross domestic
Speaker 1: product of Barbados, and four billion shy of the gross
Speaker 1: domestic product of Jamaica. Basically, I'm asking what would happen
Speaker 1: if someone gave you Stanford the average economic output of
Speaker 1: an entire Caribbean country for a year, tax free. By
Speaker 1: the way, the guy who gives the ten billion gets
Speaker 1: to write it off, and every dollar Stanford earns on
Speaker 1: that ten billion, they get to keep ten billion. I'd
Speaker 1: have to do something really dramatic for ten billion dollars,
Speaker 1: really dramatic. He thinks about it for a moment. Actually
Speaker 1: I counted for about two seconds. Then he comes up
Speaker 1: with something really dramatic. The one area where I think
Speaker 1: there is an opportunity for significant incremental funding is in
Speaker 1: the biomedical sciences. If that were an endowment, for example,
Speaker 1: so you're throwing out a half a billion dollars a year.
Speaker 1: I could find a way to spend a half a
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year in biomedical research ten billion. He
Speaker 1: could totally use another ten billion. At this point, I'm
Speaker 1: just curious. I mean, I've read about strong length thinkers
Speaker 1: in books, but I've never actually talked with one before.
Speaker 1: So I keep posing more and more far fetched scenarios.
Speaker 1: Do you ever imagine that a president of Stanford might
Speaker 1: go to a funder and say, at this point in
Speaker 1: our history, the best use of your money is to
Speaker 1: give to the UC system, not to Stanford. The UC
Speaker 1: system is the University of California system ten schools Berkeley, UCLA,
Speaker 1: San Diego, Davis, Santa Barbara, etc. Maybe the finest group
Speaker 1: of public universities in the world. If you listen to
Speaker 1: the previous episode of Revisionist History, the one about Vasser,
Speaker 1: I talked about the New York Times Access Index. It's
Speaker 1: a ranking of one hundred and eighty universities in the
Speaker 1: US according to how good a job they do in finding, educating,
Speaker 1: and financially supporting low income students. Right now, Vasser comes
Speaker 1: in eighth well six of the first seven spots on
Speaker 1: that list. Our University of California schools. Stanford has sixteen
Speaker 1: thousand students. The UC system has two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: eight thousand students. So I'm asking John Hennessy, might there
Speaker 1: ever ever be an instance where he might tell a
Speaker 1: would be super philanthropist. Look, we've already got twenty two
Speaker 1: billion dollars in the bank, higher than the output of
Speaker 1: two Caribbean countries, and it's earning us a couple of
Speaker 1: tax free billions every year. Your dollar would go further
Speaker 1: at the public institutions down the street, since they educate
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty two thousand more students than we
Speaker 1: do with a fraction of the endowment. I'm not holding
Speaker 1: Hennessey to his answer. I'm not looking for him to
Speaker 1: make a solemn pledge. I'm just asking, well, that would
Speaker 1: be a hard thing to do, obviously, to turn them
Speaker 1: turn them away. And I think the other question we'd
Speaker 1: be asked is how can I have confidence that they'll
Speaker 1: use my money well, which we're obviously the president of
Speaker 1: Stanford is not in a position to vouch for I
Speaker 1: think now I realize he has institutional loyalties he's the
Speaker 1: head of Stanford, and I must say I like Tennessee.
Speaker 1: But am I the only one who finds his answer
Speaker 1: ridiculous even offensive? He's suggesting that he can't guarantee that
Speaker 1: the UC system may be the most successful and socially
Speaker 1: progressive public university system in the world. He can't guarantee
Speaker 1: they would use that money well as opposed to what
Speaker 1: as opposed to spending eight hundred million dollars on a
Speaker 1: boutique graduate program for one hundred elite students a year.
Speaker 1: That kind of using money, Well, it is the pre
Speaker 1: eminent scholarship program. You'll get the best and brightest young
Speaker 1: men and women from around the world who will receive
Speaker 1: a graduate education at the world's best university when this
Speaker 1: program is established. That's the promotional video for the scholarship fund.
Speaker 1: You just heard Phil Knight talking about it. You can
Speaker 1: watch all four minutes and twenty three seconds of it
Speaker 1: at revisionist history dot com. It's impressive, lots of drone
Speaker 1: aerial shots of Stanford's spotless, palm lined avenues. But let's
Speaker 1: do the math on the scholarship. Hennessy's plan is to
Speaker 1: fund it from the proceeds of investing eight hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: It's an endowment. The usual rule of thumb is that
Speaker 1: an endowment gives you about five percent a year, so
Speaker 1: forty million dollars and with one hundred students a year
Speaker 1: in a three year program, that comes out to one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty three thousand dollars per student. One hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty three thousand dollars per student per year. Our
Speaker 1: precious medals also involved helicopters. Are they doing this on
Speaker 1: a beach at Saint Bart's. When Hennessey announced this scholarship,
Speaker 1: he gave an example of the kind of issues that
Speaker 1: perhaps these mega scholars could tackle. He thought that they
Speaker 1: could look at the effects of the hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: gift that the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave to the
Speaker 1: New Jersey public school system. Newark historically has some of
Speaker 1: the worst public schools in the country, and I guess
Speaker 1: the reason Hennessey thought Suckerberg's gift needed to be studied
Speaker 1: was that there's a feeling among some that the donation
Speaker 1: hasn't had quite the impact people thought it might. This
Speaker 1: is the exact quote Hennessy gave to The New York
Speaker 1: Times nobody understood the real difficulty in making significant change
Speaker 1: in the public education system. The first thing that the
Speaker 1: strong Link guy wants to do with his crack team
Speaker 1: of eight hundred million dollars scholars is critiqued the weak
Speaker 1: Link decision to spend one hundred million dollars on poor kids.
Speaker 1: A billionaire gives a fortune to an elite school in
Speaker 1: order to understand why another billionaire's donation to a poor
Speaker 1: school isn't working out? And what if Stanford's mega million
Speaker 1: dollars scholars can't answer that question, should another billionaire give
Speaker 1: even more money to an even more elite school to
Speaker 1: answer the question of why the four hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: a gift to study the one hundred million dollars gift
Speaker 1: hasn't worked out. Please stop me before I tweet again.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that the strong Link approach is never appropriate.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Canada in the nineteen seventies and
Speaker 1: at that time the country had lots of good universities,
Speaker 1: but there was a feeling that what the country needed
Speaker 1: was at least one world class science in technology university.
Speaker 1: So they created that the University of Waterloo, and it
Speaker 1: was a great idea. But the United States today is
Speaker 1: not Canada in the nineteen seventies. It does not suffer
Speaker 1: from an excess of egalitarianism. It suffers from the opposite problem.
Speaker 1: Its strong links have never been stronger. And when you
Speaker 1: make strong link arguments at a time like now, you
Speaker 1: end up sounding ridiculous. Just listen. February twenty fourteen, the
Speaker 1: billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin gives one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars to Harvard. It's to support Harvard's financial
Speaker 1: aid program. Here's what the president of Harvard says. Ken
Speaker 1: Griffin's extraordinary philanthropy is opening Harvard's gate. It's wider to
Speaker 1: the most talented students in the world, no matter their
Speaker 1: economic circumstances. And here's what Ken Griffin says. My goal
Speaker 1: with this gift is to make sure and this is
Speaker 1: the exact quote, that our nation's best and brightest have
Speaker 1: continued access to this outstanding institution. Now, let me remind you,
Speaker 1: at the time of Griffin's gift, Harvard had an endowment
Speaker 1: of thirty six billion dollars. So a billionaire gives one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million to an institution that has an
Speaker 1: endowment of thirty six billion, because he thinks the school
Speaker 1: needs help opening its gates wider to the most talented
Speaker 1: students in the world. Because he's worried that thirty six
Speaker 1: billion might not be enough to ensure continued access to
Speaker 1: this outstanding institution. These two comments were not off the
Speaker 1: cough remarks. I'm reading them from the official Harvard press release.
Speaker 1: Trained professionals perfected those quotes. Smart Harvard educated people approved them.
Speaker 1: They probably sat down in teams around a long oak
Speaker 1: antique conference table dating back to the eighteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: came up with what they thought was the most compelling
Speaker 1: justification for why giving another one hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: dollars to Harvard is a good idea? Is that the
Speaker 1: best they could come up with. We're talking because I,
Speaker 1: as you know, have been critical of some of the
Speaker 1: I'm part of the backlash. I guess back to my
Speaker 1: conversation with John Hennessy of Stanford, and I'm just curious
Speaker 1: about whether how common or how often do you run
Speaker 1: into two backlash to people saying enough with some of
Speaker 1: these large Am I a lonely voice or is this
Speaker 1: something that you have encountered a lot and think about
Speaker 1: a lot. We don't encounter it a lot. I would say,
Speaker 1: I think the reason we probably don't encounter it is
Speaker 1: that we um don't view this as who gets the
Speaker 1: biggest slice of pie here? We view it as, um,
Speaker 1: what can we do? What can we do to that's transformative?
Speaker 1: How can we increase our contributions of the world. I
Speaker 1: mentioned maybe the most obvious criticism of what Stanford is doing,
Speaker 1: and he says, we don't encounter it a lot. Apparently
Speaker 1: the President of Stanford only encounters people who look at
Speaker 1: American higher education and conclude that what it really needs
Speaker 1: is more money at the top. With all due respect,
Speaker 1: the President of Stanford needs to get out more. Take
Speaker 1: a little trip to Glassborough, New Jersey, to the campus
Speaker 1: of what's now called Rowan University. Maybe take a look
Speaker 1: at the statue up front. Everything you've been listening to
Speaker 1: Revisionist History, sometimes the past deserves a second chance. If
Speaker 1: you like what you've heard, we'd love it. If you
Speaker 1: rate us on iTunes, it helps a lot. You can
Speaker 1: find more information about this and other episodes at revisionist
Speaker 1: history dot com or on your favorite podcast app. Our
Speaker 1: show is produced by Meilabal, Roxane Scott and Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is composed by Luis
Speaker 1: Guerra and Taka yazoo Zawa. Flawn Williams is our engineer.
Speaker 1: Fact checker Michelle Sarroca. Thanks to the Penalty Management team
Speaker 1: Laura Mayor, Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.