MIT Gets $140M Pledge from Anonymous Donor
It would be interesting to compare the utility of one large $100 million+ grant to an institution like MIT, Yale or Harvard that is already well-endowed, compared to a hundred different million dollar grants to institutions across the USA or the world, where the money might arguably be more effectively used or sorely needed.The counterpoint would be that the money could support fundamental research that eventually results in a much larger payoff to the world at large, but I'm not convinced that this outweighs the benefits of funding hundreds, or even thousands of students/scientists in less prominent schools who might go on to make such discoveries themselves.Of course, all this assumes that donor's primary aim is to make the largest possible impact, when in all likelihood it's motivated more by an affinity for the school, or in the case of other donors, prestige from having their name on the walls.