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In 2024, Harvard's endowment grew by about $5bn. During the same period, it received about $1bn in "Research: Federal and Non-Federal sponsored revenue". I'm

• epistasis 1y ago
  Interesting analogy. I suppose this is why I should be able to receive iPhones free from Apple too? Their value grew tremendously yet we as consumers of their phones still have to keep paying them!
• tzs 1y ago
  And in some years it grows less, or even shrinks. The whole point of an endowment is that it is supposed to support the things that it was funded to support indefinitely. Most endowments, including Harvard's, already spend each year about as much as is they reasonably can while not putting its long term viability at risk. Also, endowments are not one big pool that can spend on whatever the university happens to want. They are comprised of thousands of separate pools created by donations that were donated on the condition they be used for specific things. E.g., some rich person leaves a bunch of money to a school to create the Milburn Pennybags Professorship of Antitrust. That money goes into its own pool in the endowment and its earnings will legally be restricted to funding that one professorship.
  • rahimnathwani 1y ago
    20% of Harvard's endowment is unrestricted. There's plenty of waste in Harvard's budget, which taxpayers subsidise both directly and indirectly.