The endowment isn't there just to pay for OCW, and the market returns last year are not the returns every year. Also, most donors restrict their funds to specific goals.
Every R1's endowment pays for everything a school must do: campus shuttles, sending lab kits to remote students during a lockdown, funding research activities (conferences, equipment, student salaries, journal fees), supporting student clubs, building/maintaining modern facilities, allowing poorer students---those already overcoming disadvantages relative to their peers---to focus on studying instead of working, poaching leading instructors from around the globe, building reactors.
According to https://ocw.aprende.org/donate/why-donate/ (a slightly older mirror of OCW's current donate page) MIT gets half of its $3.5 million budget from the institute while the remainder comes from donors. I also don't know that MIT is allowed to dip into the OCW fund for planting trees and endowing professors, so a donation probably actually goes toward maintaining AV gear, paying undergraduates to write captions, ensuring legal compliance, paying external courseware developers and Github fees.
(Yes, they occasionally hire external writers. I did this one summer before private repositories were free. OCW hires also get MIT certificates, which unlock a lot more course materials on MIT domains if you search a bit.)
At 2 million visits per month, one percent of visitors giving 5 dollars each year falls short of their budget by 500 grand. Do you think even one percent gives? Do you think they had 2 million site visits last month?
I don't know if they monetize their Youtube channel either. I can't recall ever seeing ads on their videos.
Ultimately, a lot of people are leeching off of large donors and corporate sponsors, who get back---at least short-term---practically nothing for their support. I see the school's perspective, why give more if users (or benefactors) are unwilling to support a reasonably worthy cause?
(If you need proof that a leading university will revoke its charitable publishing of course materials, look no further than UC Berkeley, which took the ball home after being ordered to add closed captions to free lecture videos.)
In short, I would recommend giving a few coffees worth to OCW before giving to Wikipedia (for the same reason you'd pay for universal grade school whether you have children or not), and I have historically done both.
Every R1's endowment pays for everything a school must do: campus shuttles, sending lab kits to remote students during a lockdown, funding research activities (conferences, equipment, student salaries, journal fees), supporting student clubs, building/maintaining modern facilities, allowing poorer students---those already overcoming disadvantages relative to their peers---to focus on studying instead of working, poaching leading instructors from around the globe, building reactors.
According to https://ocw.aprende.org/donate/why-donate/ (a slightly older mirror of OCW's current donate page) MIT gets half of its $3.5 million budget from the institute while the remainder comes from donors. I also don't know that MIT is allowed to dip into the OCW fund for planting trees and endowing professors, so a donation probably actually goes toward maintaining AV gear, paying undergraduates to write captions, ensuring legal compliance, paying external courseware developers and Github fees.
(Yes, they occasionally hire external writers. I did this one summer before private repositories were free. OCW hires also get MIT certificates, which unlock a lot more course materials on MIT domains if you search a bit.)
At 2 million visits per month, one percent of visitors giving 5 dollars each year falls short of their budget by 500 grand. Do you think even one percent gives? Do you think they had 2 million site visits last month?
I don't know if they monetize their Youtube channel either. I can't recall ever seeing ads on their videos.
Ultimately, a lot of people are leeching off of large donors and corporate sponsors, who get back---at least short-term---practically nothing for their support. I see the school's perspective, why give more if users (or benefactors) are unwilling to support a reasonably worthy cause?
(If you need proof that a leading university will revoke its charitable publishing of course materials, look no further than UC Berkeley, which took the ball home after being ordered to add closed captions to free lecture videos.)
In short, I would recommend giving a few coffees worth to OCW before giving to Wikipedia (for the same reason you'd pay for universal grade school whether you have children or not), and I have historically done both.