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Comment by soup10 | Hacker News Reader

Harvard has a 50 billion endowment, what do they need federal funds for. If they value their intellectual independence so much, then cut the cord.

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Much of that federal funding is for research, the same as any other R1 university. We all benefit from research findings. Endowments are used for other purposes.

There are a few colleges that take no federal funding in order to maintain total independence (mostly for religious reasons). But their research output is virtually zero.

The federal funds are for doing research that the government wants to fund, not keeping the university’s lights on. This is about terminating a productive partnership, not ending a subsidy handout to schools.

Yup, people really need to learn their history. The modern federally-funded research university system came about as a direct result of the US getting caught with their pants down after Sputnik. The government decided it's in its best strategic interests to maintain long-term investments in basic and applied research. Those aren't things you can just spin up on short notice, though it's easy to kill it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis#Response

Also, isn't a ton of the IP from federally funded research just handed over to US corporations for free or pennies on the dollar?

Something tells me this is more of the current administration threatening to completely wreck US prosperity if they don't get wins on their bigoted social war agenda.

Absolutely. Everything in tech is hugely funded by tax payer money.

Modern semiconductor manufacturing is nearly all researched in partnership with federal funding. It's viewed as a national security issue.

The best theory I've heard so far is that Trump has this wild idea that if he can tank the US economy into a recession/depression then he can renegotiate our debt. He thinks this will save the US trillions of dollars. Except it'll cost the US trillions of dollars as well. I don't know if he's smart enough to think this up but it does kinda seem like what he's doing.

Honestly I think he’s just doing it for the reasons he has stated

Yeah but money is fungible.

It actually isn’t. Grants, as well as much of endowment funds are restricted. They legally must be accounted for separately and can only be used as specified. If you have a billion dollars in restricted endowment or grants towards scholarships and resources, you cannot use them to keep the lights on.

Research projects require grant funding because the schools do not have a business model to justify doing the research.

As a university professor, I agree with you. I think universities must cut the cord and be independent. The university faculty gave up the control to administrators and administrators, in turn, gave up the control to politicians.

The government letter demands giving control back to tenured academics (from students, activists, and administrators).

I think this is the common-sense response. The push back I've heard is that endowments are apportioned to specific things. That is, it's not an open piggy bank. Nevertheless, $50B is a _lot_ even if the smallest allocation is 1% of the largest that is likely on the order of tens of millions.

It'd be an interesting strategy if you could split the organization based on departments that depend heavily on federal funds (i.e. perhaps STEM fields such as medicine and physics/hard sciences, etc.) and those that are not (and perhaps simultaneously requiring more freedom of thought).

Perhaps resurrect the Radcliffe College to support the more intellectual, free thought based departments. [1]

[1] https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/about-the-institute/histor...

Do you have money in the bank? Do you have income? If so, you don't really need any help from the government. If you value your personal independence so much, then cut the cord.

I think that's what they're saying.

They don't. This is the federal government threatening to withhold payment for research they commissioned.

Next step: taxing that endowment (which is a good idea irrespective of the other demands: universities are government-subsidized tax-free hedge funds)

Just consider the tax-exempt status as an indirect subsidy for research and education. I think its ROI is much higher than from any other way the government could use the uncollected amount.

Sure, that's the narrative to manufacture consent from the naive, but I don't buy it at all. Perhaps for very small fledgling universities that makes partial sense; even then I am skeptical. For Harvard, definitely not.

At very least, if your endowment is growing on an inflation-adjusted basis, it does not appear to me that you need further subsidies; your primary business is to be an hedge fund and the treasury of an empire, not education for the masses. Gains should be taxed like a hedge fund at that point.

If you want to subsidize education as a society, there are much better ways: fund research directly and cut through the indirect cost crap (which was popular among academics up until the moment the current administration started advocating for it).

> Harvard has a 50 billion endowment, what do they need federal funds for. If they value their intellectual independence so much, then cut the cord.

I agree. Gulf monarchies will probably come in a give even more billions to these institutions anyway to make up for the losses. No strings attached of course...

Harvard probably already secured some more funding from Qatar and what not.

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