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(Tenured Radical)

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Harvard Hoards
the Egg



Harvard University's riches have surged past $25 billion, the school announced Friday... Harvard's endowment, now $25.9 billion, exceeds No. 2 Yale's by more than $10 billion and is one-and-a-half-times larger than the market value of General Motors. …Those extra billions have transformed the university, though critics say Harvard should spend more of its savings.




Yes, well, one doesn’t want to be vulgar… and after all it’s their money… But what are they planning on doing with it?

The hyperthyroidism of Harvard University’s endowment has now become a story in itself - and a much more intriguing story, to UD’s mind, than the controversies over what the university pays fund managers, and who will replace departing fund managers, etc.

I.e., what could any university possibly want with an endowment of 25 billion dollars, and why is this university anxiously seeking to increase that amount?



The most natural explanation - the university wishes to spend these immense sums on education-related matters - has prompted the “critics” mentioned up there in the article about the university having passed the 25 billion mark (actually, it’s at almost 26 billion) -- to wonder why, like some vast doting hen, Harvard just positions its haunches over its nest egg and sits. Even Horton the elephant, hero of Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hatches the Egg, does eventually hatch the egg.


Perhaps Harvard can’t think of what to do with the money. Here are some suggestions.

1.) Make tuition at Harvard free for all students.
2.) Make yearly large gifts to struggling and deserving colleges in the United States.
3.) Make yearly large gifts to struggling and deserving secondary schools in the United States.
4.) Give huge sums to charity.


Using these and other techniques, Harvard can spend down its unconscionably outsized endowment and begin the long process of recognizing itself once again as a university, rather than as a country, or as a global capital formation enterprise.