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> Why shouldn’t regulators and taxpayers demand that Harvard build? Wait, wut? Last I checked, Harvard is a private institution. Besides, Harvard produces its

by trimbo 7y ago

> Why shouldn’t regulators and taxpayers demand that Harvard build? Wait, wut? Last I checked, Harvard is a private institution. Besides, Harvard produces its graduates because they can be picky on who they can admit. Why would we assume that Harvard can scale to provide a "Harvard education" to someone who didn't qualify to make it in today?

fastball 7y ago
Harvard is a private institution that is widely funded by government-backed loans. They are also a "non-profit" and so don't pay property taxes even though they have a ludicrously-sized endowment fund which certainly accrues a lot of "profit".
- jgalt212 7y ago
  true for most every college (private and public)
- monocasa 7y ago
  And perhaps more importantly, government grants for research.
PragmaticPulp 7y ago
For better or worse, the United States government is deeply entangled with the financing of college educations. Much of the money flowing in to Harvard via tuitions is involved in government-related loans in one way or another. The idea isn’t to make demands of how a private institution spends their money. The idea is to add conditions to government-sponsored loans such that they could only be used at institutions that meet specific criteria. If a university doesn’t meet the criteria, then we don’t give government-sponsored loans to attend that institution. Harvard isn’t the best example of this idea, but consider how much better the student loan crisis could have been if we attached even minimal criteria that degrees must reasonably be associated with job placement and a minimum level of student earnings after graduation. It’s not a great idea to let the government essentially funnel money into these institutions at large scale via student loans, then leave students entirely on the hook for consequences, without at least minimal expectations that the universities use this money wisely.
nerfhammer 7y ago
Andreessen's point might not be that the government should force them to do anything necessarily, but that no one even expects them to do anything. They have 40 billion dollars in the bank. No one expects them to do anything with it. The government, donors, anyone in Harvard, the proverbial man on the street, none has an expectation that they should try to do anything greater than whatever they're doing now.
- pmarca 7y ago
  Yes, exactly.
- bhl 7y ago
  The "nobody expects anything from Harvard" statement might be a bit too strong. I've seen people say that Harvard has a responsibility to do more social good with it's massive endowment. Here's one example [1]: > Endowments over $1 billion should be taxed if the university doesn’t grow freshman seats at 1.5x the rate of population growth. Harvard, MIT, and Yale have combined endowments (approximately $85 billion) greater than the GDP of many Latin American nations. So maybe the issue isn't with expectations, but with incentives: to effect change in these old hierarchical systems, you need elitists to be anti-elitist; to make decisions against one's interests for the betterment of others. [1] https://www.profgalloway.com/how-i-got-here https://www.profgalloway.com/how-i-got-here
pmarca 7y ago
Harvard is subsidized by the federal government and the American taxpayer several ways. It benefits from federal student loan programs. It receives federal research grants. It is allowed to be a tax-exempt institution. And it is allowed to own a tax-exempt endowment. Normal private institutions in America have none of those.
- tathougies 7y ago
  > Normal private institutions in America have none of those. This is not true. Any non-profit classified corporation would be tax-exempt. This is not particularly difficult to set up. All you need to do is file with the IRS and not have shareholders.
- geofft 7y ago
  > It benefits from federal student loan programs. If by "normal private institutions" you mean companies, sure, that's true. But normal private educational institutions absolutely benefit from this and other similar programs. The University of Phoenix, for instance, heavily recruits GI Bill-eligible students, and their right to do so was defended by Republican US senators. > It receives federal research grants. You can do this as a private company just fine. SBIR is a great example. I worked at a startup that got federal research grants less than a year after being formed. > It is allowed to be a tax-exempt institution. And it is allowed to own a tax-exempt endowment. These are common for normal non-profit institutions in America and are in no way specific to Harvard.

by trimbo 7y ago

fastball 7y ago

Harvard is a private institution that is widely funded by government-backed loans. They are also a "non-profit" and so don't pay property taxes even though they have a ludicrously-sized endowment fund which certainly accrues a lot of "profit".

jgalt212 7y ago
true for most every college (private and public)
monocasa 7y ago
And perhaps more importantly, government grants for research.

PragmaticPulp 7y ago

For better or worse, the United States government is deeply entangled with the financing of college educations. Much of the money flowing in to Harvard via tuitions is involved in government-related loans in one way or another. The idea isn’t to make demands of how a private institution spends their money. The idea is to add conditions to government-sponsored loans such that they could only be used at institutions that meet specific criteria. If a university doesn’t meet the criteria, then we don’t give government-sponsored loans to attend that institution. Harvard isn’t the best example of this idea, but consider how much better the student loan crisis could have been if we attached even minimal criteria that degrees must reasonably be associated with job placement and a minimum level of student earnings after graduation. It’s not a great idea to let the government essentially funnel money into these institutions at large scale via student loans, then leave students entirely on the hook for consequences, without at least minimal expectations that the universities use this money wisely.

nerfhammer 7y ago

Andreessen's point might not be that the government should force them to do anything necessarily, but that no one even expects them to do anything. They have 40 billion dollars in the bank. No one expects them to do anything with it. The government, donors, anyone in Harvard, the proverbial man on the street, none has an expectation that they should try to do anything greater than whatever they're doing now.

pmarca 7y ago
Yes, exactly.
bhl 7y ago
The "nobody expects anything from Harvard" statement might be a bit too strong. I've seen people say that Harvard has a responsibility to do more social good with it's massive endowment. Here's one example [1]: > Endowments over $1 billion should be taxed if the university doesn’t grow freshman seats at 1.5x the rate of population growth. Harvard, MIT, and Yale have combined endowments (approximately $85 billion) greater than the GDP of many Latin American nations. So maybe the issue isn't with expectations, but with incentives: to effect change in these old hierarchical systems, you need elitists to be anti-elitist; to make decisions against one's interests for the betterment of others. [1] https://www.profgalloway.com/how-i-got-here https://www.profgalloway.com/how-i-got-here

pmarca 7y ago

Harvard is subsidized by the federal government and the American taxpayer several ways. It benefits from federal student loan programs. It receives federal research grants. It is allowed to be a tax-exempt institution. And it is allowed to own a tax-exempt endowment. Normal private institutions in America have none of those.

tathougies 7y ago
> Normal private institutions in America have none of those. This is not true. Any non-profit classified corporation would be tax-exempt. This is not particularly difficult to set up. All you need to do is file with the IRS and not have shareholders.
geofft 7y ago
> It benefits from federal student loan programs. If by "normal private institutions" you mean companies, sure, that's true. But normal private educational institutions absolutely benefit from this and other similar programs. The University of Phoenix, for instance, heavily recruits GI Bill-eligible students, and their right to do so was defended by Republican US senators. > It receives federal research grants. You can do this as a private company just fine. SBIR is a great example. I worked at a startup that got federal research grants less than a year after being formed. > It is allowed to be a tax-exempt institution. And it is allowed to own a tax-exempt endowment. These are common for normal non-profit institutions in America and are in no way specific to Harvard.