Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an article yesterday on endowments that was based on the colleges that participated in the 2018 Nacubo-TIAA Study of Endowments.  On average, investments returned 8.2 percent on their endowments for the 2018 fiscal year, compared with 12.2 percent for the 2017 fiscal year. The drop in the percentage was largely because of a decline in U.S. and international equity markets. Thirteen institutions had endowments valued at $10 billion or more, compared with 10 the previous year. Nearly half of the money colleges withdrew from their endowments was spent to support student scholarships and other financial-aid programs. Two-thirds of the colleges reported that they had increased spending from their endowments in the 2018 fiscal year, with a median increase among those institutions of 6.6 percent.   You can see the endowments for the 800 colleges that participated in the study here.  The colleges with the top-ten endowments are above.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she believed God wanted Donald Trump to become president in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Wednesday (see video above).

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president,” Sanders said. “And that’s why he’s there and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

She also called Trump the “most conservative president” America has ever had. 

“There’s a reason evangelicals are sticking with the president, and that’s because he’s delivered on all the things he said he would do,” she added. 

Sanders, the daughter of a Southern Baptist pastor-turned-governor, Mike Huckabee, has spoken about her faith in the past. In an interview with the Baptist Press last year, Sanders said she did not separate her faith from her work. “Because if you are a deep-rooted Christian, your faith is what defines you, and I think that’s something that I try to take with me in everything I do and certainly don’t separate that when I go to work every day,” she said.

If God wanted Donald Trump to be president, it must be because he wanted to punish the American people.  Why?  I don’t know.  I never saw such hypocrisy as some on the Christian Right including Huckabee Sanders and her father who try to justify their support for Trump on religious grounds.

Tony