Year after year, USF’s tuition increases. At the time of writing, the cost of attending for on-campus undergraduate students, without the addition of aid or scholarships, is $83,642. This follows the trend over the last few years where tuition increases annually from 2.8% to 4.9%. Many students rely heavily on scholarships in order to pursue education at USF, but where that money actually comes from can be mystifying.
USF relies on endowments primarily to fund certain scholarships. An endowment is a financial gift to the University, pooled in an investment portfolio intended to ensure long-term financial wellness. Despite the total endowment portfolio at USF clocking in at around $600 million, the money often has strings attached and can’t be freely spent, according to USF’s investment policy.
In August 2017, school alumni Dominic and Leona Tarantino pledged $1 million for what would be dubbed the Dominic and Leona Tarantino Accounting Scholarship. The merit based scholarship is awarded to at least two accounting majors in the school of management per year, with a preference toward students who graduated from a San Francisco high school.
A near decade later in 2024 Dominic Tarantino would pledge another $1 million, in memory of his late wife Leona. The 2024 donation was pledged to support art history majors at USF and renamed The LAT Gallery (Leona A. Tarantino ’54) within the Ann Getty Institute of Art and Design.
Gifts from donors like the Tarantinos are collected in USF’s investment portfolio, intended to matriculate over time and pay off for students in the form of scholarships, research grants and endowment funded programs.
However, USF’s investment portfolio has sparked controversy in the past. In May 2019, Foghorn reporters revealed that USF had previously invested in offshore financial entities, including a $2 million stake in a Cayman Islands based private equity fund with ties to Royal Dutch Shell. Investment mechanisms, like offshore investing, use “blocker corporations” to shield the University from certain taxes tied to unrelated business income. While legal and widely used to maintain organizations tax exempt status, the practice raises ethical concerns.
Amid the “People’s University” encampments in 2024, many called for USF to take accountability for its investments in companies like Palantir, which has provided technology to the Israeli military to plan attacks in Lebanon and Gaza. In May 2024, the University announced the construction of USF’s socially responsible investment task force which would inform their decision to divest from four U.S. defense companies contracted with the Israeli military a year later.
In ASUSF’s 2024 open letter calling for the divestment of companies tied to Israeli military occupation and human rights violations, they urged the University to publicly disclose its investment portfolio. Because USF’s endowment investment portfolio is managed privately as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, much of its investments are not accessible to the public. This has led to calls by student activists for the University to publicly disclose its investments. However, due to USF’s operation as a private institution governed by a privately appointed board, the University is allowed to make investments without necessity of public disclosure. Individuals like the Tarantino’s make endowments which are then pooled and invested in the University’s portfolio, but the ambiguous nature of where those investments actually go have raised calls for transparency by students.
