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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?

#221

Post by EMIRELADERO »

rayiner wrote: post #206
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 word "dictatorial" doesn't apply here. What we're talking about is government funding being provided to private universities. And Congress hasn't appropriated specific amounts of money to specific universities. It has created a pool of funds and given the executive branch discretion to allocate those funds. The powers of the executive branch are invested in the president. See Article II, Section 1 ("The executive…

I'm guessing that what GP meant with "dictatorial" was along the lines of the power you describe being wielded in a specific manner.

To put it differently: a state of affairs where the Executive/President has those powers may not be dictatorial, but this specific instance of him making use of that discretion in this specific way might be.

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

#222

Post by dmurray »

physPop wrote: post #161
xracy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason that court cases typically address standing before addressing the underlying question. It matters much more that you're taking on a case before you determine the case on the merits. If the case doesn't have standing it is not worth considering. "Conveniently Ignoring" the standing question is frankly an admission of compliance to something that is not the law . Who cares "why people can't live withou…

This isn't law, its journalism, and frankly the article is well written and asks a good question -- why are these (extremely wealthy) universities finances so brittle?

The question is self-answering as soon as you read the first two sentences though.

> Columbia...has an endowment of roughly $15bn. Mr Trump’s administration withheld a mere $400m in federal funding.

With the best investing in the world, that $15bn might throw off 1 billion a year in perpetuity. $400m (a year) is a very serious chunk of the university's budget.

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

#223

Post by rayiner »

runako wrote: post #147
otterley wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that Trump is breaking the law. I'm no expert in NSF funding, but Congress may well have delegated its authority over how the funds in the pool are to be allocated and distributed to the executive. If someone has more knowledge to contribute, that'd be most welcome.

Clear example here is USAID. Congress has directed, as recently as March 2025, that a specific amount of funds be spent on the statutory goals of the US Agency for International Development. (I have not checked, but I am sure federal law also goes into some detail about what tasks USAID needs to perform.) I do not imagine it is congruent with the law to simply fire all the staff and shut down USAID (or "merge" it int…

> I do not imagine it is congruent with the law to simply fire all the staff and shut down USAID (or "merge" it into State).

The Fourth Circuit allowed the administration to proceed: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/28/appeals-court-usaid...

That is not a final word on the constitutionality of dissolving USAID, but it's an indication that the Court didn't believe plaintiffs had a high likelihood of success on the merits to justify the preliminary injunction.

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

#224

Post by bootsmann »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #175
otterley wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true only to the extent that Congress delegates its power to the executive. Per Article I of the Constitution, Congress has the plenary power of the purse. So if it decides to spend $X on something specific , it has to be spent on whatever that something is. The President doesn't have discretion in that case.

>This is true only to the extent that Congress delegates its power to the executive. Directly or indirectly the people of the United States have power over all three branches. One can easily make strong arguments that the problem here is both that Congress as abdicated its powers to the executive (rather than delegated), and that the people have ignored that Congress should retain those powers while focusing on the p…

> If some bureau or department fails to spend all of its budget, has the president somehow committed some treason-adjacent crime, or is that just thriftiness?

Yes, he has. It is not the presidents power to judge whether the money he spent in defiance of congress is sufficient, it is congress that holds this power. If congress thinks they should spend less, they can settle this by changing the budget. What would you say if the next democratic president simply refused to spend a single dollar assigned to ICE to "be thrifty"?

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

#226

Post by themgt »

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.

A few other commenters have alluded to it, but Obama's 2011 (and then 2014/2016) "Dear Colleague" letters are critical to understanding what's going on here. As FIRE tells it:

In April 2011, the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) established new mandates requiring colleges and universities receiving federal funding to dramatically reduce students’ due process rights. Under the new regulations, announced in a letter from Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali, colleges and universities were required to employ a “preponderance of the evidence” standard—a 50.01%, “more likely than not” evidentiary burden—when adjudicating student complaints concerning sexual harassment or sexual violence. The regulations further required that if a university judicial process allows the accused student to appeal a verdict, it must allow the accusing student the right to appeal as well, resulting in a type of “double jeopardy” for the accused. Additionally, OCR’s letter failed to recognize that truly harassing conduct (as defined by the law) is distinct from protected speech. Institutions that did not comply with OCR’s new regulations faced federal investigation and a potential loss of federal funding.

The innovation in these letters was realizing OCR could just come to a new understanding of what civil rights law required, then tell universities that since this is what civil rights law means, following the guidance would be a mandate for institutions to receive federal funding. So now Trump's come in and reinterpreted civil rights law once again.

At this point probably a supermajority of the country thinks this innovative idea for enacting ad-hoc nationwide policy changes has been abused by one or more administrations, but I haven't heard anyone seriously working on a generalized solution. Everyone's mostly given up on Congress and just hopes their team can take control of the magic pen.

https://www.thefire.org/cases/us-department-educations-offic...

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

#227

Post by aidenn0 »

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…

Comparing tuition is silly, IMO. Lots of people don't pay full-price at private universities, and nobody who is in-state pays the full-price for public universities.

If you care about efficiency, then divide the budget by the number of students.

Harvard has a budget of about $9B, which is about 4-5x larger on a per-student basis than a few public universities I compared (I couldn't find the SUNY budget with 30s of searching, you are welcome to provide that info if you have it).

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

#228

Post by otterley »

rayiner wrote: post #218
otterley wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true only to the extent that Congress delegates its power to the executive. Per Article I of the Constitution, Congress has the plenary power of the purse. So if it decides to spend $X on something specific , it has to be spent on whatever that something is. The President doesn't have discretion in that case.

> So if it decides to spend $X on something specific, it has to be spent on whatever that something is. The President doesn't have discretion in that case. But the Congress never did that. You won't find an appropriations bill where Congress allocated $X to Harvard and $Y to Princeton, etc. In fact, it did the opposite. Under Title VI, it empowered the executive branch to withhold money based on civil rights violatio…

We’re in agreement here. That’s why I mentioned in the first sentence that Congress can delegate certain spending decisions. But it’s not the default behavior as the Constitution defaults to Congress having sole plenary authority.

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

#229

Post by codexb »

DrillShopper wrote: post #159
codexb wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some level, someone needs to have discretion on which grants to award and not award. You can call it "dictatorial", but I don't see how it's any less dictatorial if the decision-maker is some faceless, unaccountable bureaucrat vs a President that is accountable to voters. Surely, grants were being denied before for other reasons.

> At some level, someone needs to have discretion on which grants to award and not award Then that person should not be a politician or political appointee who judges on the merits and not on the votes it will bring.

Ah, the so-called benevolent dictator. The magical philosopher king to deliver us all from tyranny.

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

#230

Post by otterley »

bootsmann wrote: post #224
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is true only to the extent that Congress delegates its power to the executive. Directly or indirectly the people of the United States have power over all three branches. One can easily make strong arguments that the problem here is both that Congress as abdicated its powers to the executive (rather than delegated), and that the people have ignored that Congress should retain those powers while focusing on the p…

> If some bureau or department fails to spend all of its budget, has the president somehow committed some treason-adjacent crime, or is that just thriftiness? Yes, he has. It is not the presidents power to judge whether the money he spent in defiance of congress is sufficient, it is congress that holds this power. If congress thinks they should spend less, they can settle this by changing the budget. What would you s…

Well, it’s unlikely to be “criminal” or “treason,” but it is unconstitutional. An aggrieved party can seek redress from the court to compel the executive to transfer the provisioned monies.
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