As students returned for the fall semester at Texas’ flagship university, a notable development greeted them: the university is on track to have the largest endowment in the world.
According to the American Council on Education, an endowment is “an aggregation of assets invested by a college or university to support its educational and research mission in perpetuity.”
Land operated by the University of Texas System yields an endowment asset of approximately $6 million per day. According to Bloomberg News, the university’s endowment is poised to surpass Harvard, which would render UT the wealthiest university in the world (it is currently in second place).
Perversely, the university can thank President Joe Biden. The president’s anti-energy policies—along with Ukrainian adventurism—drove the price of oil to more than $100 a barrel, increasing the value of the university’s energy holdings in West Texas. This jump in revenue will likely narrow the gap between UT’s $42.9 billion endowment and Harvard’s $53.2 billion as of June 2021.
In 1876, the Texas Legislature set aside 1 million acres to support university operations. In the 1920s, they discovered oil, and the revenue gusher has supported the University of Texas (and, to a lesser degree, Texas A&M) ever since.
In recent decades, however, the university has betrayed this rich history at the altar of the “sustainability” eco-cult. Most recently, this has taken the form of the subtle promotion of “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)” standards.
Last March, the university’s “Global Sustainability Leadership Challenge” hosted an event where a BlackRock executive promoted the scheme:
Blackrock was just listed last week as one of the top ten companies boycotting the oil and gas industry by Comptroller Glenn Hegar.
How the university uses their windfall remains undecided. Interested Texans may contact the University of Texas Board of Regents at (512) 499-4402 or via e-mail at bor@utsystem.edu.
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