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Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?
- boplicity 1y agoTo be clear: It's not as simple as funding for these schools being taken away. What's being threatened is funding for research being done at these schools. That's a huge difference.
- aianus 1y agoDoes the admin of the school get any of this money today or is it entirely allocated to the individual researchers?
- 2cynykyl 1y agoYes, about half is skimmed off the top by the university, called 'overhead'. This is used to fund everything, from research-essential things like paying for heat and maintaining buildings, to less obvious but still research-essential things like IP lawyers to deal with contracts and campus security. However, SOME of the overhead will end up supporting things that are 'contentious' like DEI enforcement or whatever.
- arduanika 1y agoIt's not as simple as that, either. Every research grant comes with an "overhead" charge on top that goes to the university admin, which can be something like 60%. https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/02/10/lies-damn-lies-and-university-research-overhead-costs/ https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/02/10/lies-damn-lies-and-un... And moreover, it's not just the research grants that are being threatened, as seen in TFA. There's also the massive subsidy in the form of tax exemption. No other hedge funds receive that kind of preferred tax treatment. Only universities.
- boplicity 1y agoSo I have a rare disease. The only treatment is surgery. However, there is an ongoing study on a promising treatment at an elite university for a very effective and simple drug-based treatment. That type of research funding is absolutely being threatened. So, yes, it really is that simple. If only Trump were trying to force universities to be more efficient with their spending. However, both of us clearly know that is not what is going on here.
- PaulHoule 1y agoSee https://archive.ph/GkGWE https://archive.ph/GkGWE
- leftistdisease 1y ago[flagged]
- mathgradthrow 1y agoThey might also be happy for an excuse to implement some of these policies and have the administration as scapegoat.
- steveBK123 1y agoYes some of them have said as much...
- pjc50 1y ago"Free speech" is when the President unilaterally withholds research grants from universities, based on statements made by students (not faculty)?
- ty6853 1y agoThis 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.
- freeone3000 1y agoThe 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.
- School-Cotton 1y agoLaw everywhere is meaningless unless “we have to follow the law” is a cultural norm. This is why norms are more fundamental and more important than laws.
- ty6853 1y agoYou are discovering this. It wasn't that long ago when the national guard took tuition money away from Kent State in the form of executing their students for free speech.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- timewizard 1y agoFederal 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.
- Papirola 1y ago[flagged]
- Calavar 1y agoLet's be real, this is a Maoist attempt to supress the intelligencia. The anti-Semitism angle is just a thin veneer to sell it publicly. This is why, after Columbia accepted the first set of demands, the admin immediately came back with a second set of demands
- marricks 1y agoI believe what’s under discussion is a students right to protest the US governments involvement in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
- Papirola 1y agoI believe you can protest whatever, even things that are not real (like the so called genocide, where the population actually grows). There should of course be limits to your protest: violence against people you disagree with should never be an option. PS: if you can stop the war by returning all the hostages, it's not a genocide.
- marricks 1y agoboth sides have hostages, and every country in the world besides the US and Israel call it one, in case you missed that
- myth_drannon 1y ago1 year old children as hostages?
- strathmeyer 1y ago"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- steveBK123 1y agoI 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 community vs vs 4 year college. Obviously what he is doing is punitive. BUT, I think the constant focus in the press on the Ivys when we talk about education is a huge distraction from how we are actually going to improve access, quality & cost to education in this county.
- School-Cotton 1y agoThe feds aren’t funding ivies for the purpose of education, they’re funding researchers who happen to work at the ivies to do research.
- steveBK123 1y agoMultiple people pointing this out, and absolutely right. Some question though of how all the research grants do kind of cross-subsidize the education in a way as it pays for research professors, their graduate staff, etc? Otherwise why do we collocate research and teaching?
- nine_k 1y ago> why do we collocate research and teaching? Because we want the same scientists who do, or recently did, advanced research to teach students? Because we want students to be involved in actual real genuine cutting-edge research? I suppose this is the logic. As a student back in the day I worked in a university lab, and it was pretty interesting to play a role in solving problems that don't have answers in the end of a textbook.
- foobiekr 1y ago"Otherwise why do we collocate research and teaching?" Because you need a second generation of researchers.
- amazingamazing 1y agoprivate schools shouldn't be getting public money. shocking people disagree. yes they do research that benefits the public. so does Meta and Google, who don't get public money. public money should go to public schools. especially considering that the PIs who do the work in the private school scenario effectively boost the private school's clout with public money, but these private schools do not increase accessibility by opening up admission further. that said, trump is also doing this for the wrong reasons, sadly.
- micromacrofoot 1y agoMeta and Google absolutely do get public money, for another commonly known example, every single one of Elon Musk's companies have gotten significant funding paid for through our taxes — government contracts, subsidies, grants, you name it
- amazingamazing 1y agothose also shouldn't - at least without the government getting an equity stake.
- micromacrofoot 1y agodon't really disagree, but also this is a "get money out of politics" level change — next to impossible because there are piles of money to be made by the people in charge
- djtriptych 1y agoMeta and Google definitely get a ton of public money.
- amazingamazing 1y agothey shouldn't.
- e40 1y ago
- Kapura 1y agoThis 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.
- catapart 1y agoYeeep. This is the only thing worth knowing about this whole mess. The people trust their reps to handle the money, and the reps are the only people who are supposed to be able to manage that money. Yet here we have tacit acceptance that the president can fuck with citizens' money just because he's in his feels about something. Absolute clownery.
- snickerbockers 1y agoAmerica 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 supposed to use it if they are convinced that what he's doing is unconstitutional. Some of the executive branch's appointee's have authority over him but only in specific circumstances (such as 25th amendment) and they're usually in agreement with him since he gets to appoint them anyways. Otherwise, all authority in the executive branch effectively belongs to the president and random midlevel bureaucrats can only exercise it on his behalf.
- otterley 1y agoThis 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.
- eric-p7 1y agoFrom the HN guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- xnx 1y agoI keep seeing this presented as if the money were being given away, but isn't it more accurate to describe it as payment for services (e.g. access to research facilities)?
- linguistbreaker 1y agoThe POTUS should not have this authority obviously, BUT As "Ivies" grew their endowments at hundreds of percent faster than their student bodies, they became essentially hedge funds that do some education.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- primer42 1y agoAs 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?
- rahimnathwani 1y agoUniversities can and they do: https://public.com/bonds/screener?issuerSymbol=PDFHV 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.
- vonmoltke 1y agoThose are standard, unsecured bonds. They're not loans against anything in the endowment.
- rahimnathwani 1y agoRight, and the endowment already uses leverage, so many of the endowment's assets will already serve as security for loans.
- vonmoltke 1y agoSure, but that's margin trading. These bonds have nothing to do with the endowment.
- rahimnathwani 1y agoYeah, sorry I didn't make it clear enough that I was agreeing with you. The endowment's assets are likely mostly/all pledged as security for margin trading, in which case there may be few/no assets left which could serve as collateral for borrowing that will fund payouts.
- indoordin0saur 1y ago
- daft_pink 1y agoI feel things like Universities and Hospitals are some of the most questionable non-profits in existence. They operate and appear as for profits businesses to most people.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoThere are no owners (shareholders) getting dividends, is the major difference.
- daft_pink 1y agoi just am not sure that the lack of shareholders is a reasonable reason why hosptitals and universities should have non-profit status they appear to be operating as a large business that try to bring in more revenue than expenses and don’t seem focused on the public good and seem to have other motivations.
- didgetmaster 1y agoIt is part of the political reality that we live in. Whichever party is currently in power, will inevitably use that power to promote ideas that are favorable to them and to dissuade ideas that they are opposed to. The same people who are whining about the Trump administration abusing their power by doing these things; were cheering on the Biden administration for doing similar things from the opposite angle. This is why we have to be very careful when crafting laws. Before passing it because we want our party to use it to help us, we have to imagine what would happen when the opposing party tries to use this law against us.
- gryfft 1y ago> cheering on the Biden administration for doing similar things from the opposite angle What is the #1 thing you consider "a similar thing from an opposite angle?"
- lordfrito 1y agoBiden's multiple student loan forgivness attempts come to mind? He might have been handing out money, as opposed to taking it away like Trump. But the underlying issues are the same: he did it unilaterally using executive order, and the courts had to get involved because there were concerns about constitutionality. If the executive branch has the authority to determine where money is spent, then it seems obvious to me that it also has the authority to determine where it isn't spent. If you think of the president as an executive "CEO", then the current CEO can change the decisions of the previous CEO... This is in fact what we're voting for in the presidential election -- "how" to run the daily business of country. New CEO, new goals, new policies, etc.
- didgetmaster 1y agoThe complete disregard for our immigration laws was probably the biggest thing, even though there were a number of things that came close. Millions were let across our borders with almost no vetting whatsoever. Criminals came in freely from all over the world bringing drugs, violence, and human trafficking with them. The Biden administration acted more like a travel agent than a border enforcement force. Anyone who spoke up about it, was attacked. Something more closely related to Trump's current actions against universities, was Biden's war on energy. Pipelines canceled. Lands and leases locked up. Taxes and regulations designed to reduce energy production.
- strangeloops85 1y agoPublic schools in the US get a relatively small fraction of their budget from state funding. The distinction between public and private is not as large or substantial as one might imagine. For example the 10-campus UC system's total budget is $54 billion of which $4.6 billion comes directly from the state's general fund. https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4998 https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4998 - the federal funding here is the same as for private universities, to do research or other work in the form of contracts/ grants.
- jmyeet 1y agoPeople need to understand how the pharmacology pipeline works. The Federal government provides funds for research. That research finds novel compounds and new treatments. The product of that resaerch then gets transferred to private companies who commercialize it and then make massive profits from it. Generally speaking, drug companies don't research with one exception: patent extension. A given compound will be patented and then the patent owner will have a monopoly over that for a number of years, supposedly because there'd be no investment otherwise, but that patent will ultimately expire. Except... it doesn't really. It's why over a century later we're still dealing with insulin patents. "Patent extension" is the process where you make a small change to a molecule or a delivery system and then get a new patent, refusing to sell the old. And it can be hard for someone else to produce a generic for many reasons. Now I have a lot of problems with this system: 1. Any form of patent extension should be illegal, basically; 2. The institutions who actually come up with this should share in the profits. After all, it's the government paying for it; 3. We give a monopoly to these companies in the US where it's illegal to import the exact same product from overseas, which leads to something costing $800 in the US and $5 in France. But given this is the system we're stuck with, cutting off funding makes absolutely no sense. Why? 1. It's going to dramatically impact drug companies negatively in the future as their supply of new products dries up; 2. It's antoerh element of soft power where the US can use the power to produce certain medicines to influence other countries. Think about what happens if China becomes the source for the world's medicines (personally, i'd be a fan but the purveyors of this policy most definitely are not). Government research has given us things like the Internet and mRNA vaccines. This is so unbelievably shortsighted. And why are they doing it? Well, the party of Free Speech is punishing institutions because some of their students made factually correct but mean statements about Israel.
- dekhn 1y agopharma does plenty of research outside of patent extension.
- niemandhier 1y agoGöttingen and Berlin were arguably the best universities in the world in 1930. They were not in 1940.
- amai 1y agoFor physics and math that might be true. But Copenhagen was also very important.
- WorkerBee28474 1y ago[flagged]
- ssalazar 1y agoThis author presumably understands but buries the lede that for an endowment of $15 billion a university would typically only spend 5%, or $750 million, annually. So "a mere $400m" is over half of the annual funds from the endowment (not including tuition income and donations) that might be available to a university with such an endowment. It should be relatively obvious that spending into the principal of an endowment is not a sustainable practice over the long-term for universities that are operating at the scale of centuries.
- kccqzy 1y agoAt a scale of centuries, monetary units themselves become highly unstable. On this time scale it was recently that people thought deflation was good for the economy, and that spending 5% every year would be reckless.