Funding

Towards the end of the lunch, our college head mentioned the difficulty of soliciting donations and our college endowment fund is abysmal. Like all other colleges, we have a dedicated College Development Committee, which does nothing but look for donations.

Alas, development means money.

(My college is well known for this very problem: We are not poor – just needy, deprived, under-privileged, disadvantaged, or whatever flowery word you could think of to cover up our empty purse.)

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On that very same day, it appeared on the news that a handful of famous secondary schools under the Direct Subsidy Scheme were accused by the Commission of Audit for not using the reserve (or endowment in reality) fund properly.

To say it in a modest term, I believe our thick head government officials are barking at the wrong tree.

After all, do you expect the schools to put their money for fix-term deposit and let the money vanish with inflation ? As long as the headmaster or other managers do not put the money in their own pocket, and avoid margins or warrants or options or other high-risk gadgets (or, in Benjamin Graham's term, speculation), the school should have a free hand to invest.

Or, as my friend TW vividly pointed out: 你不理財,財不理你.