Work Takes

What incentive do universities have to be the best they can be?

From my understanding universities don't turn profits (in the way that some like a University of Phoenix does) but only redistribute capital back into programs or reinvest it into the endowment. For example there is no board or group of shareholders that get a dividend when the university is financially healthy. So my question is what incentive does a university have to attract the best students, build the best facilities, and attract the best employers to higher its graduates, besides improving its own notoriety and prestige?

Public Comments

1. Federal funding, research funding, improved facilities, research prestige, and increased revenue. People like the president of the university needs to get paid and all sorts of free perks that the university foots, the professors need to be paid, their projects need to be funded, research needs to be funded, and facilities need to be maintained. much of it boils down to research notoriety. People who work for universities and attend universities do so for the facilities and resources to complete a goal - like the University Medical Centre at Univeristy of Arizona and their Cancer facility. They have made leaps and bounds in their research that may affect millions in their fight against cancer, so they are prestigious and receive mad props.