The Trump administration responded quickly to Harvard University’s defiance on Monday, freezing more than $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts after the university rejected demands that it change hiring, admissions and other policies.
Hmm if he keeps doing this to colleges it stop researchers from researching tech and slows gettin new ones? Never heard of that strategy in a 4x game. Its a Bold move let’s see how that works for the player.
Oh he’s going to disconnect from server soon so he doesn’t care about long term state?
Based on some basic searches (deep research, obviously), Harvard can run off of just its endowment for almost 10 years. Add in forthcoming donations and investment returns along with some mild cost-cutting, and it seems like an easy bet on Harvard to outlast Trump… hopefully they don’t cave.
Harvard can run off of just its endowment for almost 10 years.
They can’t. It’s not just cash in a savings account. It’s hundreds of investments that have legal restrictions on the usage of the interest from those investments that regulate how it can be used.
That’s what I was thinking: how can Trump mess with their endowment?
So long as it’s an official act the Supreme Court says he can do anything he likes.
The message I got from Harvard today sits in refreshingly stark contrast to the one I got from Columbia a few weeks ago. I opened it dreading what HU was going to say, and I’m pleasantly surprised. The school has many things it needs to work on, and I’ll take a good news like this when I can. Where do we go from here?
Without delving deeper into these numbers, the politics, mechanics, or absurd cost of education in the US - $2.2B is an absolutely staggering amount of funding for a single institution. To say that it is privileged is an understatement.
Every bit of tech and medicine in your entire life was made possible by institutions like Harvard. The gov’t gets a rip roaring deal by investing in universities. It’s not merely funding. It’s investment in America’s industry and scientific leadership. What are all those tax receipts worth?
Remember that a loooot of that goes to stuff like funding research, as that’s the domain of universities beyond just education. I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all
Unfortunately, all institutions need to divest their funding sources away from the Federal government so these economic threats can’t be used against them.
The problem with that is they have already become obsessed with making money and given up on actually educating. Seeking further outside funding would only further distract them from education.
