6 ms·

Harvard has over $50 Billion in its endowment. If it wanted to expand its exceptional educational access across America, it very well could. Harvard is primari

Harvard has over $50 Billion in its endowment. If it wanted to expand its exceptional educational access across America, it very well could. Harvard is primarily a brand for wealthy people, and they need the non-wealthy cohort to justify the legitimacy of their degree. Harvard does have world class institutions, but that’s primarily to reinforce the brand they’re selling to wealthy alumni and donors who wants their kids to enter the exclusive club.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
Yeah most don't know they have far more wealth than the Vatican.
- speed_spread 3y ago
  The Vatican's wealth is made of all the churches they own. Like McDonald's, its primarily a real estate business.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    This is a common misunderstanding. They don't own the land.
jncfhnb 3y ago
I feel like you have to pick a lane between saying it is a world class institution and “it’s just a brand”. A world class institution likely deserves to be a good brand
- raincom 3y ago
  Harvard ‘buys’ faculty, that’s how they have become a world class institution. They rarely tenure their assistant professors. Whenever some professor becomes a rock star in some a second tier school, or non-elite school, HYP/S just buys these faculty with fat salaries, chairs, generous lab funds. Definitely, this makes many prospective Ph.D students flock to HYP/S. All the talk about affirmative action is about undergrad/law school/medical school/business schools. Not so much about m.s/ph.d admissions. Because this exclusiveness is perpetuated; otherwise, Harvard ceases being Harvard. What happens if MBB recruit many UC Davis undergraduates; what if Louisiana state university law graduates become Supreme Court justices/interns at elite govt institutions. HYP/S, uber wealthy, and their elite servant class(media, admission committees, c-level execs) don’t want to lose their power by distributing power across many schools, states, geographical centers.
- xapata 3y ago
  It's a hedge fund that operates a university for the tax advantages.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    I very much doubt that. I’m guessing the vast majority of the endowment is restricted. That is, even if it is invested for returns, the money and the returns on the money must be used for the intended purpose of the donor.
    - detourdog 3y ago
      Which does describe one aspect of the lever. A group can have all sorts of hedges including a world class institution.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        I don’t think you understood what was said. The university is not part of the hedge fund. It’s a hedge fund that manages the Harvard endowment.
        detourdog 3y ago
        I understood. I'm saying that large endowments no matter their mission has a group of people that control that endowment. A conservative endowment can be used to leverage other positions members of this group can hold.
    - xapata 3y ago
      Salaries and other compensation can be considered part of the overhead of managing the money and the institution.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        Restricted funds are not limiting to generally spending on the school. Many of them are more specific, I assume
- queuebert 3y ago
  Some parts of Harvard are world class, while others are riding on brand recognition. I've been at Harvard and several other schools, and Harvard had the highest ratio of brand to substance and in many cases was strictly inferior to the good state schools.
  - jchanimal 3y ago
    I remember laughing (from the Reed College library) at a radio interview about attempts to reduce grade inflation in the Ivies, because a student was interviewed complaining, "We have to study so hard, some weekends I don't even go out!" No one in my cohort had to study, we wanted to.
    - hellisothers 3y ago
      For the most part I found people didn’t come to Reed for the brand, you went for the academics (and weirdness) and it showed.
      - prottog 3y ago
        [dead]
- Zetice 3y ago
  I would lean more towards "just a brand" IMO; would love to hear from grads though on if the actual education itself has prepared them for life in ways few other schools could. I imagine it's of some quality, if for no other reason than the brand attracts talent and the money buys everything the talent needs. That said, what even is educational talent? Is that where the incentives are aligned for the institution, to get the best teaching talent?
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    Is everyone just gonna skip over the Networking aspect like it isn't The most valuable part of the whole deal? As the saying goes: it's not What you know, it's Who you know.
    - Zetice 3y ago
      This is a big part of it; someone I know didn't even apply to HBS and kind of regrets not trying because they didn't at the time realize the scope of that network. She ended up at Kellogg so still got a strong network, but Harvard is kind of unbeatable.
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    Who would even be able to make such comments? You go to one uni or another. FWIW I don't think the content changes much between institutions. Certainly I don't see what an Oxford grad learned that some other engineering student at say Imperial or MIT didn't do.
    - pca006132 3y ago
      I studied in a university in Hong Kong. What I found interesting is that our universities are considered pretty good (decent ranking), but in reality we lack a lot of courses that are offered by other universities (e.g. theoretical computer science), what we mostly have are courses in hot topics such as AI and CV, and a lot of professors can only do research and are terrible in teaching... So yeah, you can have much worse education...
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Not really. If you take Albert Einstein and put him in University of Michigan or Harvard, he's still going to be Albert Einstein, and some rich kid from Hingham is still going to be just another rich kid from Hingham - not Albert Einstein. On some objective level, Harvard is awesome. But it really doesn't matter that much. Geniuses are going to be geniuses. And no matter how much resources you pour on some mediocre person, they're still going to be mediocre. Where it does matter is that a person of equal skills from Harvard is going to get more/better jobs than the person from Michigan. This is why I think it's fair to say it's "mostly a brand". The value is not in the education you're getting. Harvard isn't going to make the same person meaningfully more skilled or educated than Michigan. The value is in the rubber stamp, mainly.
  - Jcowell 3y ago
    > If you take Albert Einstein and put him in University of Michigan or Harvard, he's still going to be Albert Einstein, and some rich kid from Hingham is still going to be just another rich kid from Hingham - not Albert Einstein That’s ridiculous. Surely it depends on when and where you send Albert Eisenstein. it doesn’t matter how smart you are if the facilities around are up to the task to fulfill it. > Geniuses are going to be geniuses. And no matter how much resources you pour on some mediocre person, they're still going to be mediocre. Genius are only as much geniuses as the information they can retain, understand , and synthesize. It doesn’t really matter how much of a genius a 12 year old could be if you never teach him or give him the means to learn what an atom is. are we seriously going to act as if certain institutions don’t allow better flourishment than others ? I’m not saying Harvard is the holy grail here but come on.
    - snapplebobapple 3y ago
      It's pretty common to have the op's misconception. Thinking that the natural progression is forward rather than a delicate balance of a large number of choices where any one or small number of total wrong choices ends you up in centuries of no progress or backsliding is so common it's even the basis of popular religions like Marxism and Marxism's progeny. I wouldn't be too hard on the guy, he's a symptom of our partially stagnant and/or backsliding time.
- aiisahik 3y ago
  100% except for one minor correction - Harvard is a brand for prestige. Wealth is just one factor. They will continue to admit student cohorts that will maximize that prestige. That will include wealthy alumni, athletes, smart kids, and minorities. The impact of these schools on the education and social outcomes of disadvantaged groups in this country is miniscule. I'm speaking as someone who went to an Ivy. If the US really wants to change outcomes for minorities, it needs to start at childcare and K-12. If the Supreme Court REALLY wanted to change shit up, it would limit public school districts to state level funding sources only and give vouchers to everyone.
- varelse 3y ago
  [dead]
- crote 3y ago
  There is no reason both can't be true at the same time. Education is quite disconnected from research. Being good at one does not automatically imply being good at the other, but we do treat it as such. Harvard is obviously a world-class research institute, but it seems to be funded by the wealthy essentially treating it like a social networking experience, and knowing that the label "Harvard" opens a lot of doors due to the research reputation. The education given to the "poor" and the stringent selection criteria imposed on them primarily serves as set dressing.
jimbob45 3y ago
Don't fixate on Harvard. People forget that the UT endowment (among other schools) is very nearly as high. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73
jhallenworld 3y ago
Lack of diversity would damage their brand, so how can they legally promote diversity? Well they could promote poor students- affirmative action for lower classes. I think allowing legacy while also promoting lower class students is OK. The lower class students benefit from the money of legacy student parents as well as the contact with the well connected legacy students themselves. I could imagine that next there would be a supreme court case against this. A conservative court might then ban consideration of class. But then we are left with a Harvard that really is a just a club for rich kids. Smart kids who are not rich could try to fight against legacy promotion, but I doubt a conservative court would do anything about it.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Unfortunately in general, but fortunately in this one particular very specific case race is very correlated to lots of measurable things in America. So, I think colleges will easily succeed in promoting diversity while having ostensibly race-blind admissions policies. The Supreme Court can I guess try to go case-by-case banning metrics. This stupid whack-a-mole game will look pathetic on their part and burn up whatever tiny bit of institutional legitimacy they have left, but at least they’ll probably fail.
  - gettodachoppa 3y ago
    >So, I think colleges will easily succeed in promoting diversity while having ostensibly race-blind admissions policies. The diversity Harvard wants is the golden calf of American liberals: black Americans. Diversity is almost always code for black people. No other race seems to deserve any attention. See how campaigns like #OscarsSoWhite were propagandized as discrimination against blacks even though the percentage of black actors winning Oscars was nearly identical to their percentage of the population, i.e. Oscars were perfect representational of black people, meanwhile every other race was greatly under-represented. A race-blind policy that factors in class/income will result in more poor asian students dominating placement, likely at the expense of black students. We already know from the discrimination lawsuits how much contempt Harvard has for asian Americans, I assure you Harvard don't want this kind of diversity.
scarmig 3y ago
Harvard is about being a reproduction ground of the current elite ruling class, both literally and figuratively. Although it's also a great educational and research institution, a brand, and a hedge fund, those are all secondary considerations to its primary purpose, and analyses that don't center class miss its fundamental role in American society.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Yeah most don't know they have far more wealth than the Vatican.

speed_spread 3y ago
The Vatican's wealth is made of all the churches they own. Like McDonald's, its primarily a real estate business.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  This is a common misunderstanding. They don't own the land.

jncfhnb 3y ago

I feel like you have to pick a lane between saying it is a world class institution and “it’s just a brand”. A world class institution likely deserves to be a good brand

raincom 3y ago
Harvard ‘buys’ faculty, that’s how they have become a world class institution. They rarely tenure their assistant professors. Whenever some professor becomes a rock star in some a second tier school, or non-elite school, HYP/S just buys these faculty with fat salaries, chairs, generous lab funds. Definitely, this makes many prospective Ph.D students flock to HYP/S. All the talk about affirmative action is about undergrad/law school/medical school/business schools. Not so much about m.s/ph.d admissions. Because this exclusiveness is perpetuated; otherwise, Harvard ceases being Harvard. What happens if MBB recruit many UC Davis undergraduates; what if Louisiana state university law graduates become Supreme Court justices/interns at elite govt institutions. HYP/S, uber wealthy, and their elite servant class(media, admission committees, c-level execs) don’t want to lose their power by distributing power across many schools, states, geographical centers.
xapata 3y ago
It's a hedge fund that operates a university for the tax advantages.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  I very much doubt that. I’m guessing the vast majority of the endowment is restricted. That is, even if it is invested for returns, the money and the returns on the money must be used for the intended purpose of the donor.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    Which does describe one aspect of the lever. A group can have all sorts of hedges including a world class institution.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      I don’t think you understood what was said. The university is not part of the hedge fund. It’s a hedge fund that manages the Harvard endowment.
      - detourdog 3y ago
        I understood. I'm saying that large endowments no matter their mission has a group of people that control that endowment. A conservative endowment can be used to leverage other positions members of this group can hold.
  - xapata 3y ago
    Salaries and other compensation can be considered part of the overhead of managing the money and the institution.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Restricted funds are not limiting to generally spending on the school. Many of them are more specific, I assume
queuebert 3y ago
Some parts of Harvard are world class, while others are riding on brand recognition. I've been at Harvard and several other schools, and Harvard had the highest ratio of brand to substance and in many cases was strictly inferior to the good state schools.
- jchanimal 3y ago
  I remember laughing (from the Reed College library) at a radio interview about attempts to reduce grade inflation in the Ivies, because a student was interviewed complaining, "We have to study so hard, some weekends I don't even go out!" No one in my cohort had to study, we wanted to.
  - hellisothers 3y ago
    For the most part I found people didn’t come to Reed for the brand, you went for the academics (and weirdness) and it showed.
    - prottog 3y ago
      [dead]
Zetice 3y ago
I would lean more towards "just a brand" IMO; would love to hear from grads though on if the actual education itself has prepared them for life in ways few other schools could. I imagine it's of some quality, if for no other reason than the brand attracts talent and the money buys everything the talent needs. That said, what even is educational talent? Is that where the incentives are aligned for the institution, to get the best teaching talent?
- DropInIn 3y ago
  Is everyone just gonna skip over the Networking aspect like it isn't The most valuable part of the whole deal? As the saying goes: it's not What you know, it's Who you know.
  - Zetice 3y ago
    This is a big part of it; someone I know didn't even apply to HBS and kind of regrets not trying because they didn't at the time realize the scope of that network. She ended up at Kellogg so still got a strong network, but Harvard is kind of unbeatable.
- lordnacho 3y ago
  Who would even be able to make such comments? You go to one uni or another. FWIW I don't think the content changes much between institutions. Certainly I don't see what an Oxford grad learned that some other engineering student at say Imperial or MIT didn't do.
  - pca006132 3y ago
    I studied in a university in Hong Kong. What I found interesting is that our universities are considered pretty good (decent ranking), but in reality we lack a lot of courses that are offered by other universities (e.g. theoretical computer science), what we mostly have are courses in hot topics such as AI and CV, and a lot of professors can only do research and are terrible in teaching... So yeah, you can have much worse education...
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
Not really. If you take Albert Einstein and put him in University of Michigan or Harvard, he's still going to be Albert Einstein, and some rich kid from Hingham is still going to be just another rich kid from Hingham - not Albert Einstein. On some objective level, Harvard is awesome. But it really doesn't matter that much. Geniuses are going to be geniuses. And no matter how much resources you pour on some mediocre person, they're still going to be mediocre. Where it does matter is that a person of equal skills from Harvard is going to get more/better jobs than the person from Michigan. This is why I think it's fair to say it's "mostly a brand". The value is not in the education you're getting. Harvard isn't going to make the same person meaningfully more skilled or educated than Michigan. The value is in the rubber stamp, mainly.
- Jcowell 3y ago
  > If you take Albert Einstein and put him in University of Michigan or Harvard, he's still going to be Albert Einstein, and some rich kid from Hingham is still going to be just another rich kid from Hingham - not Albert Einstein That’s ridiculous. Surely it depends on when and where you send Albert Eisenstein. it doesn’t matter how smart you are if the facilities around are up to the task to fulfill it. > Geniuses are going to be geniuses. And no matter how much resources you pour on some mediocre person, they're still going to be mediocre. Genius are only as much geniuses as the information they can retain, understand , and synthesize. It doesn’t really matter how much of a genius a 12 year old could be if you never teach him or give him the means to learn what an atom is. are we seriously going to act as if certain institutions don’t allow better flourishment than others ? I’m not saying Harvard is the holy grail here but come on.
  - snapplebobapple 3y ago
    It's pretty common to have the op's misconception. Thinking that the natural progression is forward rather than a delicate balance of a large number of choices where any one or small number of total wrong choices ends you up in centuries of no progress or backsliding is so common it's even the basis of popular religions like Marxism and Marxism's progeny. I wouldn't be too hard on the guy, he's a symptom of our partially stagnant and/or backsliding time.
aiisahik 3y ago
100% except for one minor correction - Harvard is a brand for prestige. Wealth is just one factor. They will continue to admit student cohorts that will maximize that prestige. That will include wealthy alumni, athletes, smart kids, and minorities. The impact of these schools on the education and social outcomes of disadvantaged groups in this country is miniscule. I'm speaking as someone who went to an Ivy. If the US really wants to change outcomes for minorities, it needs to start at childcare and K-12. If the Supreme Court REALLY wanted to change shit up, it would limit public school districts to state level funding sources only and give vouchers to everyone.
varelse 3y ago
[dead]
crote 3y ago
There is no reason both can't be true at the same time. Education is quite disconnected from research. Being good at one does not automatically imply being good at the other, but we do treat it as such. Harvard is obviously a world-class research institute, but it seems to be funded by the wealthy essentially treating it like a social networking experience, and knowing that the label "Harvard" opens a lot of doors due to the research reputation. The education given to the "poor" and the stringent selection criteria imposed on them primarily serves as set dressing.

jimbob45 3y ago

Don't fixate on Harvard. People forget that the UT endowment (among other schools) is very nearly as high. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73

jhallenworld 3y ago

Lack of diversity would damage their brand, so how can they legally promote diversity? Well they could promote poor students- affirmative action for lower classes. I think allowing legacy while also promoting lower class students is OK. The lower class students benefit from the money of legacy student parents as well as the contact with the well connected legacy students themselves. I could imagine that next there would be a supreme court case against this. A conservative court might then ban consideration of class. But then we are left with a Harvard that really is a just a club for rich kids. Smart kids who are not rich could try to fight against legacy promotion, but I doubt a conservative court would do anything about it.

bee_rider 3y ago
Unfortunately in general, but fortunately in this one particular very specific case race is very correlated to lots of measurable things in America. So, I think colleges will easily succeed in promoting diversity while having ostensibly race-blind admissions policies. The Supreme Court can I guess try to go case-by-case banning metrics. This stupid whack-a-mole game will look pathetic on their part and burn up whatever tiny bit of institutional legitimacy they have left, but at least they’ll probably fail.
- gettodachoppa 3y ago
  >So, I think colleges will easily succeed in promoting diversity while having ostensibly race-blind admissions policies. The diversity Harvard wants is the golden calf of American liberals: black Americans. Diversity is almost always code for black people. No other race seems to deserve any attention. See how campaigns like #OscarsSoWhite were propagandized as discrimination against blacks even though the percentage of black actors winning Oscars was nearly identical to their percentage of the population, i.e. Oscars were perfect representational of black people, meanwhile every other race was greatly under-represented. A race-blind policy that factors in class/income will result in more poor asian students dominating placement, likely at the expense of black students. We already know from the discrimination lawsuits how much contempt Harvard has for asian Americans, I assure you Harvard don't want this kind of diversity.

scarmig 3y ago

Harvard is about being a reproduction ground of the current elite ruling class, both literally and figuratively. Although it's also a great educational and research institution, a brand, and a hedge fund, those are all secondary considerations to its primary purpose, and analyses that don't center class miss its fundamental role in American society.