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I think Americans need to be a little more discriminating about tossing around “non-profit” without qualification. Many public and private universities are esse

I think Americans need to be a little more discriminating about tossing around “non-profit” without qualification. Many public and private universities are essentially hedge funds with schools attached to them. This money is used to do everything from real estate speculation to handing out patronage jobs to well-connected elites (and often not to running the schools well or humanely, e.g. all the labor issues around perpetual adjuncting). That a given university is a non-profit tells you almost nothing about whether it functions like a state-funded school in a social democracy. Many are actually quite predatory in terms of saddling students with tuition, fees, unnecessary courses, etc.

closeparen 7y ago
It’s a non-profit because the investments, the real estate, the patronage jobs, and the shortchanging of staff all serve the institution itself. Surplus enables it to expand or execute better on its mission. A rich dude can’t invest in the university hedge fund and then redeem for a suitcase full of cash. Only the university itself can do that, and instead of a yacht it’s going to buy a research vessel, and instead of hosting kickass parties it’s going to study fish. And if hiring the customs inspector’s son gets it out of port faster, then so be it. But overpaying for custodial services isn’t going to get the fish studied any better. Economic inequality is an important problem but it’s not the only problem. It’s okay to sometimes accumulate and deploy funds to other ends. Universities don’t act like specific cost centers of governments, they act like governments.