[thelock85]

If you reduce the choice to public funding vs wealthy alumni stewardship, and there seems to be no meaningful pathway to circumventing the current assault on public funding, then why should you alienate your wealthy alumni?

Obviously the situation is much more complex and nuanced, but this framing (amongst others I’m sure) seems appropriate if you are thinking on a 25,50,100 year time scale in terms of impact of your decision. The country is littered with public and private universities who made poor moral choices across the 19th and 20th centuries but I’m not aware of any institutions suffering long-term reputational harm (or threat of insolvency) as a result of those choices. (Then again, maybe it’s because the harm was swift and final at the time)

[itkovian_]

These are some of the richest entities - forget about universities - just entities full stop, in the entire country.

[adastra22]

Stanford’s endowment is less than $40bn.

[downrightmike]

The poor choices started in the early 90's when the SCOTUS decided that MIT didn't have to pay taxes as long as they gave enough charity discounts to students.

Everyone else jumped on it and abused the student loan system by jacking up tuition and then applying charity grants to basically all students. Leading to our current Student Loan crisis.

[runako]

As I understand matters, it started in the 70s and 80s as states pulled back from funding public institutions. This funding was the mechanism which allowed public institutions to be affordable to families such that a person could pay for a year of public college by working in a grocery store over the summer.

MIT + the more expensive private colleges are effectively a rounding error in terms of number of students matriculating, but they do play in the same market and will price accordingly. But the big driver of what they can get away with is that a college like University of Tennessee is $35,000 annually, for a total ticket likely north of $150k. (Not picking on them, just chose a state at random.)

Worth noting that this is a deliberate political choice. At any time, a state could choose to return to subsidizing in-state college at its public institutions, perhaps in exchange for working in the state after graduation.

[blackguardx]

This is the first time I've seen this framing. Typically folks blame bloated admin and fancy dorms. Where can I learn more about this take on the student loan crisis.