Universities stopped being about education when 1) they became a replacement for on the job training and 2) activists began the “long march through the institutions.”

Today they are more akin to NGOs than schools.

IMHO large endowments are less of a distraction to the purpose of the university than NCAA sports are. The Ivy League simply shut down sports completely during COVID time, which was certainly a better idea than the dozens of colleges who got as many students on campus as they could and then had to send them home within months or (!) weeks. If voters want third-class universities without endowments to continue to exist, they need to elect politicians willing to support those universities with public funds.

I think if you asked these universities they would say that they are taking the very long term view. (For instance the one I went to has been around for 800 years already.) If you are thinking on a timescale of centuries then you want to treat your funds as capital, so you spend your investment income on research, scholarships, building maintenance and other educational goals, but you don't eat into the capital or in 200 years you'll be in a bad place financially. And if your funds are sizeable then investing them and managing them is a big job that you probably don't want to outsource.

I think it leaves a bad taste in people's mouth since hedge funds are typically a bit riskier than a savings account.

Then hedge funds turn back around and put the money coming from Universities back into MIT kids hands.

It's seriously telling of why Western economies don't grow like they used to.

Money became a hot potato business where nobody has the arrogance to say "Ok, I will do this on my own"

The and Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg of today aren't leaving Harvard anymore.

This has to potential to be "chilling."