Why should we subsidize Ivy League schools or any private universities for that matter? At RealClearPolicy Adam Andrzejewski lists some facts and figures about federal support for Ivy League schools that should be pretty eye-opening if not horrifying. I’d be interested in knowing what the comparable figures are for non-Ivy private colleges or universities.
And what’s a “not for profit” institution? In my book any corporation whose CEO earns more than four standard deviations over median income is de facto for profit.
They are not as big, but they are significant and it’s the same issue. (My daughter is only a freshman at one of those prominent private universities but the calls, meetings and appeals to me have already started.). The guy plays fast and loose with some statistics, he’s grinding an axe, but the general thrust is correct.
It is a “private” institution, right? If you were a cynic you might almost think it was a revolving door of academics to government back to academia making rules to take care of themselves and their own.
What is our ROI? As Drew says, his numbers are skewed to make things look bad. If they are competing for grant money to do research, and winning, too bad for the other schools. At least in the STEM world, I think that the rotation from academia-private world-academia is probably more of a feature than a bug. If you just want to eliminate all pubic funding of research and do away with basic research, I guess we would be OK for a few years. That said, salaries for some of the university presidents are pretty outrageous. In some cases they are making as much as football coaches.
Steve
“That said, salaries for some of the university presidents are pretty outrageous. In some cases they are making as much as football coaches.”
Now THAT’s entertainment.
As I’ve said before any organization that offers salaries in excess of four standard deviations above the median is de facto for profit.
Certainly our schools are given far too much freedom in how to determine their own budgets. Claiming to be a non-profit often means they find very “creative” ways to spend surpluses, such as lavishly rewarding the administrators controlling the institution.