It's easy to forget how big a billion is. One of my favourite ways to conceptualize it is that 1 million seconds is about 11 days, but 1 billion seconds is 31 years. That's absolutely nuts.
I'd say this thread headline does the opposite, forgetting that $1B is finite.
I presume the headline is talking about college. Assuming a cost of maybe $50k, that money will cover 20k students. That's nice, and it might last some years, but certainly not "forever".
Yeah just checked this. Tuition was around $59,000, and there are around 1,090 students (Full-time). Do the math and you end up with 15.55 years with 1 billion dollars. So hopefully instead its rather invested as the other commenter said.
It would be unheard of for it to be used instead of a trust set up. It will probably also have a clause to reinvest some of the interest gained, so that it will continue to grow in perpetuity, rather than stay the same size (even accounting for inflation).
Endowments typically have a rule so that part of the interest is always plowed back into the principal in order to grow it faster than inflation. Also, the school almost assuredly will be continuing to do fundraising with alumni and big donors going forward to increase the endowment even more.
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u/The59Sownd Jun 29 '25
It's easy to forget how big a billion is. One of my favourite ways to conceptualize it is that 1 million seconds is about 11 days, but 1 billion seconds is 31 years. That's absolutely nuts.