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The moral bankruptcy of Ivy League America

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Re: The moral bankruptcy of Ivy League America

#4

Post by mochomocha »

This is a very good summary of my own thoughts regarding the Supreme Court ruling.

The American obsession with race in this specific case translates into focusing on a more superficial problem and polarizing the debate, as opposed to finding an easier solution to the bigger problem of ALDC admissions (namely: ban them), which I assume would be less controversial.

Re: The moral bankruptcy of Ivy League America

#6

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

> "The genuinely radical Ivy League option — spending their vast endowments to sharply increase student numbers — is unlikely to be entertained."

This is often said but doesn't seem to be realistic if one digs into the numbers.

Endowments aren't one big slush fund that the university can use however they want; they are a collection of individual donations, many of which can only be used in accordance with the donor's wishes. These are called restricted endowments. Harvard is cited as having the largest total endowment and their latest financial report (https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy22_harvard_fin...) on page 12 shows that 70% of their total endowment are restricted endowments with 20% of the total already composed of restricted endowments that are specifically for financial aid. In theory, the 30% of the total endowment that is unrestricted could be redirected to financial aid, increasing the amount of financial aid by 1.5x from endowment revenue only (the overall increase would be much less than 1.5x since financial aid comes from other sources as well) but it's unclear what other impact that would have on university operations.

tl;dr 1) universities are already using some of their endowments to help students, 2) there are legal limitations on how much more of their endowments they can use to help students even if practical considerations are ignored, 3) if they did so, it wouldn't be enough to "sharply" increase student numbers, and 4) people should really dig into things instead of repeating hot takes from internet pundits at face value.

Re: The moral bankruptcy of Ivy League America

#7

Post by naveen99 »

mochomocha wrote: post #4

This is a very good summary of my own thoughts regarding the Supreme Court ruling. The American obsession with race in this specific case translates into focusing on a more superficial problem and polarizing the debate, as opposed to finding an easier solution to the bigger problem of ALDC admissions (namely: ban them), which I assume would be less controversial.

They should just increase the price of admission for non merit based spots. but the universities want to take the money as a “donation” instead of cost of goods, so the parents can save on taxes as well and donate twice as much. maybe tuition should be tax deductible for everyone instead.

Re: The moral bankruptcy of Ivy League America

#8

Post by 4cao »

desireco42 wrote: post #5

Since I get to subscription page, I can only comment that paywall is not the best way to share views

I posted the link to bypass the paywall together with the submission:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36603895

It's a soft paywall anyway, there are multiple other ways to access the content.

Re: The moral bankruptcy of Ivy League America

#9

Post by balderdash »

naveen99 wrote: post #7
mochomocha wrote: post #4

This is a very good summary of my own thoughts regarding the Supreme Court ruling. The American obsession with race in this specific case translates into focusing on a more superficial problem and polarizing the debate, as opposed to finding an easier solution to the bigger problem of ALDC admissions (namely: ban them), which I assume would be less controversial.

They should just increase the price of admission for non merit based spots. but the universities want to take the money as a “donation” instead of cost of goods, so the parents can save on taxes as well and donate twice as much. maybe tuition should be tax deductible for everyone instead.

They basically already do. It’s called people that pay full tuition (and subsidize people that don’t - full usually doesn’t mean cost, it means cost+). Private universities are typically only using legacy status to add a slight advantage to candidates that are in the paying full freight pool (I.e. they’re not giving a spot to a below average legacy candidate that needs financial aid)
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