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Comment by jwjohnson314 | Hacker News Reader

> The salt in the wounds is that universities are flush with cash, yet its spent on anything and everything except for the welfare of the students.

Maybe the elites. State schools and small colleges are not flush with cash and many have been shuttered or severely downsized recently. Though they could still spend their limited funds better.

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Spending massive amounts of money on sports is something state schools are very much into.

They will shutter academic departments but continue to pay a football coach more than the University president.

Not all schools do this but it is part of the conversation, sports spending has grown out of control along with everything else.

Recent events alone do not fully represent the affairs of the past 2+ decades. Community, state, ivy, all levels were gorging themselves on federal funding and endowments. I have no comment on the current admin, but blatantly inefficient use of funds is an understatement.

What does "gorging themselves on endowments" even mean? If they did that, they wouldn't be very endowed in quick order.

Charitably, they may mean "the proceeds from their endowments" (or maybe "engorging their endowments", if that's even a proper use of the word), but I think that's a weak point. Proportionally very, very few institutions have significant endowments.

You're both wrong. I'm saying they're engorged AND well endowed. Many consider this a strong point.

Oh, yeah. Some certainly are. I think they're the subset towards whom Summers is addressing his argument, in the article under discussion.

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