It's not up to me, or any of us. It's up to Harvard, and specifically its board of trustees. Presumably Harvard doesn't want just anyone to be able to donate th

It's not up to me, or any of us. It's up to Harvard, and specifically its board of trustees. Presumably Harvard doesn't want just anyone to be able to donate the accounting cost of a seat, because the cost doesn't scale linearly. Just like with company culture, it's hard to scale up. And putting the machinery in place to facilitate such transactions would be difficult. It's much easier to say that they'll give a spot only when the donation far exceeds the cost of a seat. That way you don't need any complicated machinery. The exact limit may not even be written down anywhere. It might just be a sort of "I'll know it when I see it," sort of deal, since the number of seats given this way per year should be fairly small, even at a university as famed as Harvard. Of course, we don't actually know that any of this is happening at all. It's just a cynical presumption, as far as I can tell. All I'm saying is that it would be reasonable if it were done this way, at least from the perspective of all stakeholders who have a say in the matter.