I mentioned this in a comment above - Harvard is a private university that is blessed by favored government status. The exemption on endowment growth is worth

I mentioned this in a comment above - Harvard is a private university that is blessed by favored government status. The exemption on endowment growth is worth more per undergraduate than public colleges receive from the state (apologize for no cite, I read that it is worth 3x more per undergrad than what Berkeley gets per undergrad from the state). Harvard also gets a massive amount of its funding from government research grants, and it does divert a substantial amount of it to general operating funds. Harvard is pretty far from a purely private organization. I understand we live in a complicated world, and almost nothing is "purely" private, but there are still degrees of public and private, it exists on a continuum. Harvard, as far as "private" institutions go, is heavily supported by government money and favored status. It's nothing close to your analogy of a privately owned house.