8 ms·

Is It Time to Tax Harvard’s Endowment?

25 points by chrisBob 11y ago

chrisBob 11y ago
People give these elite colleges and universities a hard time, but I think it is mostly sensational stories with no meat. Do you know how many US schools are need blind and meet full need for all students? 6. [1] I also have no clue where the story about these schools being for rich kids came from. When my wife went to Princeton a few years back it was one of the cheapest options for her! Schools all base need on the same FASA form, but then these "expensive elite schools" will do things like cover the student portion of the aid with a grant instead of loans [2]. This makes their financial aid package much better than at most schools. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission [2] https://admission.princeton.edu/financialaid https://admission.princeton.edu/financialaid
- WYSIMOLWYG 11y ago
  I was in the same boat. It was MUCH cheaper (> $20K/yr cheaper) for me to go to an Ivy school than it was for me to go to any of my other options (including an in-state school that people considered to be the 'cheap' option).
- dalke 11y ago
  What would "meat" look like to you? Suppose you were to start "a hedge fund with a university attached to it", in order to use the university's non-profit status to minimize paying taxes. What would that look like? Would you set up need blind admission, in order to provide better cover to justify the hedge fund? The article points out that the non-profit status means that "Princeton received $105,000 in tax benefits per student. Rutgers, New Jersey’s flagship public university, got just $12,300 per student in public funding." and "Among the 60 schools Schneider and Klor de Alva analyzed, private universities with large endowments averaged $41,000 in tax subsidies, compared with $15,300 in direct funding for public flagships, $6,700 for regional state colleges, and $5,100 for community colleges." Perhaps the extra $90K/year effective subsidy per Princeton student explains why Princeton was one of the cheapest options?
  - nemothekid 11y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is. Let's say the above were true, a non profit organization uses its tax subsidies to let students attend for free - how is that not a good thing? And how is that not something that should be encouraged?
    - vilhelm_s 11y ago
      We should compare to how much good the same money would do if it was taxed instead of left to Harvard? E.g. the German state pays $32,000 per student and degree, so foresaking $400,000 of taxes in order to educate one student seems like a bad deal.
    - dalke 11y ago
      My point was that the article provided some substance, and gave numbers which explain why a needs blind admission policy does not, on its own, justify the existing tax policy. The question you asked was addressed in the article, in statements like "In a world where the government only provides limited resources for higher education, we’re almost certainly shoveling an outsized share of them to schools that don’t need the financial help." and "we seem to have stumbled into a system that disproportionately subsidizes the educations of a tiny few." The second page tries to address what a more equitable distribution might be. For example, "Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley caused a minor uproar in higher education circles by proposing that colleges should be forced to spend 5 percent of their endowments every year, the same way private charitable foundations are." However, the author is clear that there is no simple answer, and leaves the topic hanging with "I think we’d all like to spend a little less money sending other people’s kids to Harvard." Personally, I think it should have ended with "we'd all like to spend a little less money sending people to Harvard and more money sending more people to college." As to your last question, there is a balance of factors that make it difficult to answer. If the monetary policy is such that one person gets to attend Harvard for free or 4 people get to go to a public college for free ... which should we choose, and why? (Based on the numbers in the article, and the cost of tuition for different colleges, the actual number is probably between 1:2 and 1:6.)
  - euroclydon 11y ago
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  Harvard waives fees altogether for families making less than $65,000. More than 60% of US households have income less than that+, yet only 20% of Harvard's undergraduate class pays no fees. From this we reasonably say that Harvard is mostly a school for rich kids, despite its generosity to those non-rich kids it lets in. In this way it is similar to elite private high schools in NYC or boarding schools in New England (both of which still send many students). +This in not quite the correct referent class, as you'd want households with an 18 year old rather than all households. Still I'd be suprised if it was too far off.
  - rubidium 11y ago
    20% of Harvard's undergraduate class pays no fees. That's great! >300 people a year get to attend Harvard and pay no fees. Why complain about this?
  - chrisBob 11y ago
    >yet only 20% of Harvard's undergraduate class pays no fees Unfortunately I think this is mostly an issue of exposure. It is probably harder for most Andover Academy students to get into an Ivy than it would be for a similar student from a rural school, but most rural students don't know that. If the guidance counselors at high schools educated their students about their options many more of them would likely apply to top tier schools.
    - lhc- 11y ago
      Why would it be harder for a student from an elite boarding school to get into an Ivy than someone from a rural school? I would say the opposite, in no small part based on the evidence that at least supports a strong correlation.
      - jessaustin 11y ago
        These schools value variety (or diversity, if you prefer) in their classes. They could fill up entirely with valedictorians from NYC, or with rowers from New England boarding schools, or with some other well-represented population, if they so chose, because every single member of those populations applies to one or more Ivies. Because they get very few applicants from farming communities, the rural South, Indian reservations, etc., those who do apply might get in with less impressive SAT scores or "extracurricular activities" than well-represented groups. If this is news to you, I suspect you haven't thought much about these issues.
- adminprof 11y ago
  The number 6 you mention is schools that are need blind and meet full need for both US and International Students. Most well-known universities are need blind and meet full need for US students, and partially support international students. Which I think makes perfect sense.
- Nrsolis 11y ago
  This is just another attempt by those who think they have a better idea of how to use someone else's money. I'd rather see us start to question the "non-profit" status of lots of hospitals that pay their management some seriously hefty salaries. http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140809/MAGAZINE/308099987 http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140809/MAGAZINE/30...
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I'd rather see us start to question the "non-profit" status of lots of hospitals that pay their management some seriously hefty salaries. Why? The salaries are taxed. (And salaries are a tax-deductible business expense even for non-exempt organizations.) Tax-exempt non-profit status (while they are many subtypes with different qualifications) is mainly (in terms of the common feature of that status) about whether anyone has a claim on the retained earnings, not whether large salaries are paid. (Charity status within the larger tax-exempt non-profit category -- charities, in addition to being tax-exempt, have contributions that are tax-deductible for the contributor -- is largely about serving one of a set of defined "charitable purposes".)
    - Nrsolis 11y ago
      There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that some non-profit hospitals misuse their tax-advantaged status to benefit a very select group of individuals at the top of the management hierarchy. Again, if the states managed their money better, they wouldn't need to try and take the money that these educational institutions have amassed to secure their own mission. These schools manage their endowments very well because it's the only thing that provides them a measure of security in a very uncertain world. We should not be looking for new ways to hand politicians money. They've done a decidedly poor job thus far with the funds they've been entrusted with.
mhb 11y ago
It is disturbing that the author so lightly morphs a tax exemption into a taxpayer subsidy. As if the natural state of things is for the government to tax everything and whatever it doesn't is being subsidized.
- mikeash 11y ago
  What's the difference between giving you $X that other people don't get, and asking you to pay $X less in taxes that other people have to pay?
  - rubidium 11y ago
    Because it's an educational institution. That's the whole point! Harvard gets to have people with no money get degrees from their school for free because of this. It's a wonderful thing for society that they have such a big endowment. Why anyone would get so money hungry as to attack them is beyond me.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      > Harvard gets to have people with no money get degrees from their school for free because of this. As far as I know, enrollment at Harvard and most other elite institutions skews heavily toward wealthy people.
      - smeyer 11y ago
        Yes, Harvard disproportionately has many wealthy people compared to the population at large, but it also provides free educations to large numbers of people. Last I checked, the cutoff was around 60k (meaning, if your family makes less than 60k, Harvard will foot the entire bill). The challenge of overcoming this skew towards wealthy students has more to do with education in general and recruitment than the price tag when it comes to some of the wealthiest schools.
        Retric 11y ago
kailuowang 11y ago
When public education needs more money, taxing private education to support them doesn't help education in the society as a whole. High education should not be taxed, period. It's investment towards more tax income in 3-4 years. If you need to tax something to support some providers of education, it's not other providers of eduction.
- jhugg 11y ago
  One issue here is using tax policy to incentivize investment in higher education by penalizing institutions for NOT spending huge endowment windfalls on higher ed. You don’t tax Harvard the school like you tax a corporation. You tax Harvard the fund, if and only if it’s not existing primarily to support Harvard the school. Sitting on money doesn’t help the economy much.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > Sitting on money doesn’t help the economy much. This is a really dangerous misconception. "Sitting" on money isn't really possible, by definition. All money is being put to work at some point, it's just a question of where[0]. Broadly speaking, when people store money in banks, that money gets loaned out to people. If you have a mortgage, that's coming from money that someone was sitting on. If you are working at a venture-backed company, your paycheck is paid (through a lot of middlemen) from money that someone was sitting on. It's impossible for money to be 'sat on' without helping the economy. In fact, our economy depends on people saving money this way. [0] Again, this is true by definition; savings are investments. Saying that saving money isn't helpful is equivalent to saying that investing money isn't helpful.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Banks can only give loans on a portion of their holdings, the rest of the money really does just sit there doing nothing. Arguably, it's a hedge however the FED even manages reserve requirements in terms of monitory policy not as a hedge. http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm
Quanticles 11y ago
1. If you're going to tax universities, then you need to tax churches too. Good luck. 2. If you're going to tax non-profits, then why have non-profits? 3. Do we really want to penalize fiscally responsible organizations when even governments are going bankrupt? What values are we trying to support here?
- Animats 11y ago
  "If you're going to tax universities, then you need to tax churches too. Good luck." Right. There are some very wealthy churches. In the United States alone, the Catholic Church has an operating budget of $170 billion. That's bigger than Apple.
  - dkidd 11y ago
    I assume you're getting the $170 billion figure from this article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-church-america http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-chu... I think it's worth noting that over $147 billion of that number is spent by Catholic hospitals ($98.6 billion) and universities ($48.8 billion). The number more representative of what most people mean when they refer to "churches" would be Parish disbursements ($11 billion). $11 billion is nothing to sneeze at, but when you consider that there are about 17.5k parishes in the US (many of which have schools) it's a less impressive number.
- vilhelm_s 11y ago
  You don't have to treat universities and churches the same., the tax code specifically defines which organizations are tax exempt. Churches and universities are "501(c)(3) organizations", i.e. "Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation (except as otherwise provided in subsection (h)), and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office." You can just amend that law to delete "educational", which would remove the tax exemption for universities, but keep it for churches. It is already the case that there are organizations which don't pay out dividends to owners (so they are "non-profit"), but which are not tax-exempt. One example which has been discussed on Hacker News is foundations set up to accept donations in order to fund development of open-source software.
adultSwim 11y ago
Yes
mindcrime 11y ago
This is already subsumed by Betteridge's Law of Headlines anyway, but I'm tempted to propose a new "Internet law" that says "For any question that starts with 'Is it time to tax ...' the answer is always 'No'".
- mindcrime 11y ago
  It's interesting to see a group of people who self-identify as being part of the hacker community - through their presence here - tacitly endorse violence to achieve their ends. And make no mistake about it, taxation is violence. Don't believe me? Try not paying "your" taxes sometime, and wait and see how long until the State sends men with guns to arrest you. And then try defending yourself against these men with guns. We can do better than this. We should be promoting non-violent self-government, not embracing a system which is completely predicated on the use of violent force to ensure compliance.
gtrubetskoy 11y ago
I don't have any objections to the Harvard endowment being so large. What this article doesn't mention, however, is that there is a growing trend of corporations and the wealthy buying questionable research in order to achieve political/business goals, more and more educational institutions are becoming depended on this kind of income. This sort of thing should probably be taxed (if it's legal to begin with). (This is not specific to Harvard, Harvard is probably least guilty of this, actually).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

25 points by chrisBob 11y ago

People give these elite colleges and universities a hard time, but I think it is mostly sensational stories with no meat. Do you know how many US schools are need blind and meet full need for all students? 6. [1] I also have no clue where the story about these schools being for rich kids came from. When my wife went to Princeton a few years back it was one of the cheapest options for her! Schools all base need on the same FASA form, but then these "expensive elite schools" will do things like cover the student portion of the aid with a grant instead of loans [2]. This makes their financial aid package much better than at most schools. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission [2] https://admission.princeton.edu/financialaid https://admission.princeton.edu/financialaid

WYSIMOLWYG 11y ago
I was in the same boat. It was MUCH cheaper (> $20K/yr cheaper) for me to go to an Ivy school than it was for me to go to any of my other options (including an in-state school that people considered to be the 'cheap' option).
dalke 11y ago
What would "meat" look like to you? Suppose you were to start "a hedge fund with a university attached to it", in order to use the university's non-profit status to minimize paying taxes. What would that look like? Would you set up need blind admission, in order to provide better cover to justify the hedge fund? The article points out that the non-profit status means that "Princeton received $105,000 in tax benefits per student. Rutgers, New Jersey’s flagship public university, got just $12,300 per student in public funding." and "Among the 60 schools Schneider and Klor de Alva analyzed, private universities with large endowments averaged $41,000 in tax subsidies, compared with $15,300 in direct funding for public flagships, $6,700 for regional state colleges, and $5,100 for community colleges." Perhaps the extra $90K/year effective subsidy per Princeton student explains why Princeton was one of the cheapest options?
- nemothekid 11y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is. Let's say the above were true, a non profit organization uses its tax subsidies to let students attend for free - how is that not a good thing? And how is that not something that should be encouraged?
  - vilhelm_s 11y ago
    We should compare to how much good the same money would do if it was taxed instead of left to Harvard? E.g. the German state pays $32,000 per student and degree, so foresaking $400,000 of taxes in order to educate one student seems like a bad deal.
  - dalke 11y ago
    My point was that the article provided some substance, and gave numbers which explain why a needs blind admission policy does not, on its own, justify the existing tax policy. The question you asked was addressed in the article, in statements like "In a world where the government only provides limited resources for higher education, we’re almost certainly shoveling an outsized share of them to schools that don’t need the financial help." and "we seem to have stumbled into a system that disproportionately subsidizes the educations of a tiny few." The second page tries to address what a more equitable distribution might be. For example, "Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley caused a minor uproar in higher education circles by proposing that colleges should be forced to spend 5 percent of their endowments every year, the same way private charitable foundations are." However, the author is clear that there is no simple answer, and leaves the topic hanging with "I think we’d all like to spend a little less money sending other people’s kids to Harvard." Personally, I think it should have ended with "we'd all like to spend a little less money sending people to Harvard and more money sending more people to college." As to your last question, there is a balance of factors that make it difficult to answer. If the monetary policy is such that one person gets to attend Harvard for free or 4 people get to go to a public college for free ... which should we choose, and why? (Based on the numbers in the article, and the cost of tuition for different colleges, the actual number is probably between 1:2 and 1:6.)
- euroclydon 11y ago
bradleyjg 11y ago
Harvard waives fees altogether for families making less than $65,000. More than 60% of US households have income less than that+, yet only 20% of Harvard's undergraduate class pays no fees. From this we reasonably say that Harvard is mostly a school for rich kids, despite its generosity to those non-rich kids it lets in. In this way it is similar to elite private high schools in NYC or boarding schools in New England (both of which still send many students). +This in not quite the correct referent class, as you'd want households with an 18 year old rather than all households. Still I'd be suprised if it was too far off.
- rubidium 11y ago
  20% of Harvard's undergraduate class pays no fees. That's great! >300 people a year get to attend Harvard and pay no fees. Why complain about this?
- chrisBob 11y ago
  >yet only 20% of Harvard's undergraduate class pays no fees Unfortunately I think this is mostly an issue of exposure. It is probably harder for most Andover Academy students to get into an Ivy than it would be for a similar student from a rural school, but most rural students don't know that. If the guidance counselors at high schools educated their students about their options many more of them would likely apply to top tier schools.
  - lhc- 11y ago
    Why would it be harder for a student from an elite boarding school to get into an Ivy than someone from a rural school? I would say the opposite, in no small part based on the evidence that at least supports a strong correlation.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      These schools value variety (or diversity, if you prefer) in their classes. They could fill up entirely with valedictorians from NYC, or with rowers from New England boarding schools, or with some other well-represented population, if they so chose, because every single member of those populations applies to one or more Ivies. Because they get very few applicants from farming communities, the rural South, Indian reservations, etc., those who do apply might get in with less impressive SAT scores or "extracurricular activities" than well-represented groups. If this is news to you, I suspect you haven't thought much about these issues.
adminprof 11y ago
The number 6 you mention is schools that are need blind and meet full need for both US and International Students. Most well-known universities are need blind and meet full need for US students, and partially support international students. Which I think makes perfect sense.
Nrsolis 11y ago
This is just another attempt by those who think they have a better idea of how to use someone else's money. I'd rather see us start to question the "non-profit" status of lots of hospitals that pay their management some seriously hefty salaries. http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140809/MAGAZINE/308099987 http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140809/MAGAZINE/30...
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I'd rather see us start to question the "non-profit" status of lots of hospitals that pay their management some seriously hefty salaries. Why? The salaries are taxed. (And salaries are a tax-deductible business expense even for non-exempt organizations.) Tax-exempt non-profit status (while they are many subtypes with different qualifications) is mainly (in terms of the common feature of that status) about whether anyone has a claim on the retained earnings, not whether large salaries are paid. (Charity status within the larger tax-exempt non-profit category -- charities, in addition to being tax-exempt, have contributions that are tax-deductible for the contributor -- is largely about serving one of a set of defined "charitable purposes".)
  - Nrsolis 11y ago
    There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that some non-profit hospitals misuse their tax-advantaged status to benefit a very select group of individuals at the top of the management hierarchy. Again, if the states managed their money better, they wouldn't need to try and take the money that these educational institutions have amassed to secure their own mission. These schools manage their endowments very well because it's the only thing that provides them a measure of security in a very uncertain world. We should not be looking for new ways to hand politicians money. They've done a decidedly poor job thus far with the funds they've been entrusted with.

mhb 11y ago

It is disturbing that the author so lightly morphs a tax exemption into a taxpayer subsidy. As if the natural state of things is for the government to tax everything and whatever it doesn't is being subsidized.

mikeash 11y ago
What's the difference between giving you $X that other people don't get, and asking you to pay $X less in taxes that other people have to pay?
- rubidium 11y ago
  Because it's an educational institution. That's the whole point! Harvard gets to have people with no money get degrees from their school for free because of this. It's a wonderful thing for society that they have such a big endowment. Why anyone would get so money hungry as to attack them is beyond me.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > Harvard gets to have people with no money get degrees from their school for free because of this. As far as I know, enrollment at Harvard and most other elite institutions skews heavily toward wealthy people.
    - smeyer 11y ago
      Yes, Harvard disproportionately has many wealthy people compared to the population at large, but it also provides free educations to large numbers of people. Last I checked, the cutoff was around 60k (meaning, if your family makes less than 60k, Harvard will foot the entire bill). The challenge of overcoming this skew towards wealthy students has more to do with education in general and recruitment than the price tag when it comes to some of the wealthiest schools.
      - Retric 11y ago

kailuowang 11y ago

When public education needs more money, taxing private education to support them doesn't help education in the society as a whole. High education should not be taxed, period. It's investment towards more tax income in 3-4 years. If you need to tax something to support some providers of education, it's not other providers of eduction.

jhugg 11y ago
One issue here is using tax policy to incentivize investment in higher education by penalizing institutions for NOT spending huge endowment windfalls on higher ed. You don’t tax Harvard the school like you tax a corporation. You tax Harvard the fund, if and only if it’s not existing primarily to support Harvard the school. Sitting on money doesn’t help the economy much.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > Sitting on money doesn’t help the economy much. This is a really dangerous misconception. "Sitting" on money isn't really possible, by definition. All money is being put to work at some point, it's just a question of where[0]. Broadly speaking, when people store money in banks, that money gets loaned out to people. If you have a mortgage, that's coming from money that someone was sitting on. If you are working at a venture-backed company, your paycheck is paid (through a lot of middlemen) from money that someone was sitting on. It's impossible for money to be 'sat on' without helping the economy. In fact, our economy depends on people saving money this way. [0] Again, this is true by definition; savings are investments. Saying that saving money isn't helpful is equivalent to saying that investing money isn't helpful.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Banks can only give loans on a portion of their holdings, the rest of the money really does just sit there doing nothing. Arguably, it's a hedge however the FED even manages reserve requirements in terms of monitory policy not as a hedge. http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm

Quanticles 11y ago

1. If you're going to tax universities, then you need to tax churches too. Good luck. 2. If you're going to tax non-profits, then why have non-profits? 3. Do we really want to penalize fiscally responsible organizations when even governments are going bankrupt? What values are we trying to support here?

Animats 11y ago
"If you're going to tax universities, then you need to tax churches too. Good luck." Right. There are some very wealthy churches. In the United States alone, the Catholic Church has an operating budget of $170 billion. That's bigger than Apple.
- dkidd 11y ago
  I assume you're getting the $170 billion figure from this article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-church-america http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-chu... I think it's worth noting that over $147 billion of that number is spent by Catholic hospitals ($98.6 billion) and universities ($48.8 billion). The number more representative of what most people mean when they refer to "churches" would be Parish disbursements ($11 billion). $11 billion is nothing to sneeze at, but when you consider that there are about 17.5k parishes in the US (many of which have schools) it's a less impressive number.
vilhelm_s 11y ago
You don't have to treat universities and churches the same., the tax code specifically defines which organizations are tax exempt. Churches and universities are "501(c)(3) organizations", i.e. "Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation (except as otherwise provided in subsection (h)), and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office." You can just amend that law to delete "educational", which would remove the tax exemption for universities, but keep it for churches. It is already the case that there are organizations which don't pay out dividends to owners (so they are "non-profit"), but which are not tax-exempt. One example which has been discussed on Hacker News is foundations set up to accept donations in order to fund development of open-source software.

adultSwim 11y ago

Yes

mindcrime 11y ago

This is already subsumed by Betteridge's Law of Headlines anyway, but I'm tempted to propose a new "Internet law" that says "For any question that starts with 'Is it time to tax ...' the answer is always 'No'".

mindcrime 11y ago
It's interesting to see a group of people who self-identify as being part of the hacker community - through their presence here - tacitly endorse violence to achieve their ends. And make no mistake about it, taxation is violence. Don't believe me? Try not paying "your" taxes sometime, and wait and see how long until the State sends men with guns to arrest you. And then try defending yourself against these men with guns. We can do better than this. We should be promoting non-violent self-government, not embracing a system which is completely predicated on the use of violent force to ensure compliance.

gtrubetskoy 11y ago

I don't have any objections to the Harvard endowment being so large. What this article doesn't mention, however, is that there is a growing trend of corporations and the wealthy buying questionable research in order to achieve political/business goals, more and more educational institutions are becoming depended on this kind of income. This sort of thing should probably be taxed (if it's legal to begin with). (This is not specific to Harvard, Harvard is probably least guilty of this, actually).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]