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Comment by thatfrenchguy | Hacker News Reader

> Notice that they don't care about diversity of viewpoints or politics

Ever talked to someone from Harvard? (they'll usually tell you in the first 4 minutes you meet them telling you they went to school in Boston). They admit quite a number of conservative people if that's what you're worried about, and even their more left people are pretty center-right, as in they really don't want to pay more taxes.

> they could always expand the size of their enrollment

Really the feds could (and imo should) force them to do so, given a ton of their money come from federal grants. It's always been insane to me that private schools can receive 50k+ per grad student from my taxes, knowing that most people will never get in. Also insane how the elite UCs for example educates more people than the entire ivy league combined.

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> Really the feds could (and imo should) force them to do so, given a ton of their money come from federal grants.

People frequently tell me I don't understand what endowments are for. Harvard has $51 billion. If we take an average of 5% per year and this assuming they make a $2.5bn return on that investment each year (and raise zero money in addition to it), that would allow them to pay for 25k students (at $100k each. I'm rounding up by like $20k btw). That's more than Harvard has at any given time, by a few thousand.

I get that endowments are supposed to be safety mechanisms and allow funds for things like new buildings, tuition assistance, and gaining more investments. But at what point do we recognize that these are just money making schemes. Many public universities have multi-billion dollar endowments. Money held away and not being used is not adding value to our economy. I'd argue that education adds a lot of value. But that's an argument for cheaper education, not allowing it to become a highly profitable system. Clearly what is happening right now isn't sustainable.

Harvard already effectively pays for the entire tuition if you can't afford it. They have decided that preserving the endowment for future crises as well as funding other aspects of a college (running a research university actually costs a ton of money, around if not more than $100k per student) is a more important goal than ensuring that students who have families making $300k+ a year go free.

Also 5% is not a safe spending rate.

I went to Harvard and your comment about the leaning of the school is incorrect. Certainly, "even their more left people are pretty center-right" is just... wrong.

> They admit quite a number of conservative people...

Nope. Fewer than 10% of students are conservative.[0]

> and even their more left people are pretty center-right...

Nope. ~65% self-identify as "Very Progressive" or "Progressive"! [0]

There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1]

[0] https://features.thecrimson.com/2022/senior-survey/national-... [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/328367/americans-political-ideo...

Reread my previous message, what those people identify as and their actual politics and views on policies are very very different.

>conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1]

You seem to have misunderstood the article you cited, from the article:

>The percentage calling themselves conservative has been steadier over time and, at 36%, is the same today as in 1992.

No, he hasn't. Conservatives are 0.36 of the general population, which is ~40% higher than the 0.25 that are liberals.

> There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population!

Age and conservatism are largely linked, so I would take this with a grain of salt as your average college class is going to be very young.

You are entirely correct.

I found a Pew study[0] that breaks down the political leanings of Millennials, and it tracks very closely to the Harvard numbers:

57% fall into either "Consistently Liberal" or "Mostly Liberal", while only ~12% fall into "Consistently Conservative" or "Mostly Conservative".

[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/the-generati...

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