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Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

economist.com

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Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#121

Post by aoanevdus »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #88
nine_k wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fair question, but it's being asked a lot already. Let's imagine that completely legitimate circumstances lead to the US Government stopping the stream of grants to the Ivy League universities. How would they cope, given their enormous endowments that generate significant interest? This question is asked much less, and the answer is much less obvious. Hence the value of TFA.

What's the point of such an abstract question? The university's goals and expected resolution for the problem would always depend critically on why the stream of grants stopped.

When a large institution is faced with uncertainty about the future, it’s both feasible and prudent to make plans that account for multiple future outcomes. In this case, it makes sense to do both of the following:

1) Fight the administration in the legal system.

2) Plan for the case where some of those legal fights are lost.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#122

Post by aag »

Kapura wrote: post #11

This framing conveniently ignores the question of whether the president should have the authority to single-handedly withhold funding for universities, broadly considered to be one of the foundational pillars of America's strength in the 20th century. While I think it's interesting and answers the specific question it raises, it's wild that the economist has just accepted that the president has dictatorial powers.

The Economist has articles on that subject already. They do their homework. Here's just one:

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/04/24/who-will-...

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#123

Post by timewizard »

mattlutze wrote: post #74
steveBK123 wrote: post #9

I am not a fan of the orange man. But I think its an interesting question if the feds should be funding rich Ivies with small numbers of students vs more efficient state universities which educated 100s of thousands each at a fraction of the cost per student. All of the Ivy League combined educate 65k undergrads. SUNY by comparison educates 5x that many at a tuition of 1/5th to 1/10th depending on in/out of state and…

Too many people think these are funds to just run the universities. By and large, what is being withheld are funds for research. Federally-funded academic science often looks like: 1. The university + government fund/run a project 2. Project creates new knowledge (cool!) 3. The government gets a pretty awesome license to use that knowledge 4. The government more often than not gives that knowledge away (or offers gre…

On #3 "government gets a pretty awesome license" seems disingenuous. From what I've witnessed some specific agencies get to use that license in a rather limited way. It's often not broadly available to the public and commercial rights tend to be reserved to the University. Is that actually what most people would think of as "pretty awesome?"

On #4, "more often than not" and "offers great accessible licensing" seems equally disingenuous. Further, why should any of us have to license technology or patents that were primarily funded by tax revenue? Shouldn't that just be automatically and fully open? When the government decides to sequester that knowledge what process do I have to challenge that?

On #5, outside of pharmaceutical companies, what are these new GDP growth and returning pipelines that actually get created and impact citizens directly?

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#124

Post by [deleted] »

superturkey650 wrote: post #112
Detrytus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not that simple. Yes, Congress passes the bill saying that X billions of dollars have to be spent on universities, but that bill does not name every single university in US as beneficiary. That's what executive branch is for: to work out the details of how to implement the law passed by Congress. So, Trump taking money from Harvard and giving it to say, a community college in Tampa is technically still cor…

Why can’t he discriminate on political affiliation?

[deleted]

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#125

Post by mrkstu »

jimbokun wrote: post #102
epistasis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a presidential candidate promises to break the law in his campaign, that does not give him the authority to break the law. We are a constitutional republic and the constitution must be followed. It's quite clear that the current President does not give a damn about the constitution, know anything about it, or have any compunction about blatant violation of the constitution. > Otherwise, all authority in the execut…

> If a presidential candidate promises to break the law in his campaign, that does not give him the authority to break the law. The Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

Sort of. He would still be breaking the law, it’s just that if it’s an ‘official act’ then the judiciary can’t do anything about it, just Congress via impeachment.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#127

Post by vonmoltke »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #91
primer42 wrote: post #37

As I understand it, billionaires take out loans with their stock/investments as collateral to get cash without selling said assets. Why can't universities do the same? Or is my understanding of billionaire money shenanigans incorrect?

Universities can and they do: https://public.com/bonds/screener?issuerSymbol=PDFHV The yield on ~20 year Harvard bonds seems to be about one percentage point higher than the yield on 20 year treasuries.

Those are standard, unsecured bonds. They're not loans against anything in the endowment.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#128

Post by timewizard »

freeone3000 wrote: post #23
ty6853 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the double edge sword of moving away from voluntary transaction in the market and towards government-imposed funding. The government takes away your ability to choose what to fund, holds the purse, then smacks the purse at you filled with the weight of your own money.

The government, with laws as written, has more restrictions on when it can pull money than private parties, due to its legal obligation to be content-of-speech-neutral. We are discovering that United Stares law is meaningless.

Federal law is insanely complex. It's written by humans in an abstract legislative process so there's not even a guarantee that it won't conflict with _itself_. We have, several times, added laws to the register that were later determined to be in conflict with the Constitution itself.

This is why courts exist.

This is also why libertarians exist.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#129

Post by [deleted] »

timewizard wrote: post #128
freeone3000 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government, with laws as written, has more restrictions on when it can pull money than private parties, due to its legal obligation to be content-of-speech-neutral. We are discovering that United Stares law is meaningless.

Federal law is insanely complex. It's written by humans in an abstract legislative process so there's not even a guarantee that it won't conflict with _itself_. We have, several times, added laws to the register that were later determined to be in conflict with the Constitution itself. This is why courts exist. This is also why libertarians exist.

[deleted]

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#130

Post by boothby »

UncleMeat wrote: post #117
snickerbockers wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is a democracy, not a bureaucracy. The executive branch is governed by a single representative elected by the people. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the people didn't make a great choice this time but our constitutional republic is also one of the foundational pillars of american strength and trump being an idiot doesn't change that. The judicial branch has authority to stop him but they're only su…

> The judicial branch has authority to stop him but they're only supposed to use it if they are convinced that what he's doing is unconstitutional. This is not true. They can also stop him if what he is doing is illegal . Statute can absolutely constrain the executive.

> Statute can absolutely constrain the executive.

This is an open question. The judicial branch has authority, on paper. But without means of enforcing that authority, it cannot truly constrain the executive.

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