Comments on: Should Harvard Last Forever?

By: punditius

punditius — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 04:27:30 +0000

The universities remind me of the monasteries during the middle ages. They piled up the wealth, & paid no taxes. IIRC, the Henry VIII solution was to burn them down.

Short of that, I agree something needs to be done to bring these places back to reality. There’s no reason that they should be exempt from state & local property taxes, for instance. That’s a holdover from the 19th century, for crying out loud.

Ain’t gonna happen, though.

By: Brutus

Brutus — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:43:37 +0000

Harvard is using the money to buy up every piece of property nearby as soon as it comes to market, both in Cambridge and across the river in Allston, a funky Boston neighborhood, for which they will pay NO property taxes.

Boston, more than any other city, gets killed by all the tax-exempt colleges and universities within its borders. The local press covers the “payment in lieu of taxes” they make every year, and to call them a pittance is to be generous!

By: Fat Man

Fat Man — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:43:56 +0000

Note: That Chronicle link is subscribers only.

By: Fat Man

Fat Man — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:37:35 +0000

Taxman above is on to something. Institutions that pile up money in excess of a prudent capital reserve and fail to spend at least their income (including capital gains, and imputed at a minimum rate of 5%) plus a portion of their excess principal should be taxed, and taxed heavily. Their donors should not be eligible for tax deductions on new donations until the institution comes back into compliance.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:25:19 +0000

Jim: Uh, have you heard of the OpenCourseWare Consortium? I have course materials from MIT (though none of it is marketing stuff) downloaded to my hard drive, for free. Harvard has some stuff, though they’re mostly public health courses.

Having universities held to the same endowment standards (for tax purposes) as other charitable organizations makes sense to me.

And never mind Harvard: I expect that in 3172 most if not all of the universities that were around in 1700, that are around in 2008, will still be around: I have a map of Europe that lists major universities alongside the year they were founded, and I imagine Harvard (and Yale) will *always* be a Johnny-come-lately from their perspective.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:59:57 +0000

The problem with higher education is similar to primary and secondary education, in that both are essentially still early 20th Century institutions. You go sit in a classroom with 20 to 200 other students, and take notes for 12 or 13 weeks, maybe hand in some homework, take a few tests, and take a final. Where is the possible transition to a 21st Century possibility? I suggest each major university, public and private, modify 10 to 20 classrooms for internet broadcast / TV recording / audio recording and broadcast, and put their best professors in there, and use ther endowments to reach a far broader audience, and at much less cost. President Bush has an MBA from Harvard. Why couldn’t Harvard use YouTube type technology to broadcast its MBA lectures, via a secured / password protected connection available 24 hours a day, to interested students nationwide, for a reasonable fee, say fifteen percent of what it charges somebody to come to Harvard and sit in its classrooms? If a paper, or homework, or a test, can be taken on a computer, it could be submitted via e-mail. Imagine teaching not 50 students, but 500!

I believe all colleges and universities should try and aline their course offerings so that Marketing 4320 is the same at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and at Nebraska, Notre Dame, Georgia, Ohio State, Northwestern, Rice, Duke, Maryland, and so on and so forth. A student who would otherwise be stuck taking a course on campus at the U. of Whereever could instead take an online / YouTube course from a university thousands of miles away, at a reasonable cost, and avoid incompetent or shody teaching. I wish I had had this opportunity 40 years ago.

By: PersonFromPorlock

PersonFromPorlock — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:48:01 +0000

I’ve been advocating for some years now, semi-seriously, a federal tax on hiring college graduates; a thousand a year per employee with a BA, $2000 per MA and so on. I suspect employers would discover very quickly that they didn’t really need all those college graduates and the bottom would drop out of college enrollment and tuition.

By: alan

alan — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:02:07 +0000

The wealthier universities need to pay (a higher percentage of their endowments to keep tuition low) “their fair share!”

By: David Govett

David Govett — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:12:19 +0000

Why waste money at Harvard? A free PhD diploma from Japanorama University is available online at http://www.japanorama.com/images/diploma.gif.

By: Richard R

Richard R — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:25:09 +0000

How about, instead of just spending money for student tuitions, they expand? It’s been 50 years since a major new university was started, but our population continues to expand. The Ivy’s now regularly turn down students with perfect GPA’s and top .1% SAT scores. I went to Yale in the 80’s and was accepted at several highly competitive schools, I couldn’t get into any of them today.

In any other business where you’re turning away 90% of your potential customers, you’d take it as a cue to expand your capacity.

By: A guy at Harvard

A guy at Harvard — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:54:01 +0000

It should be “monumentum perenne” (perennius is the comparative).

H is not a completely one-minded place. Of course it isn’t as good as what we think the best should be. In the end, I think, the market will decide whether it keeps its position, or how much money it will need to spend so as not to slip. But any change will be gradual, because H is a big, old institution, run by people who are conservative (practically, if not politically) in the extreme.

By: Al Fin

Al Fin — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:08:01 +0000

The donating public needs to see more films like Indoctrinate U. Once they understand what universities are doing to the youth of North America most will have second thoughts about donations and bequests.

By: Taxman

Taxman — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:16:59 +0000

Rather than require them to spend a certain percentage of their endowment each year, I would prefer that they lose tax exempt status once their endowment reaches a threshold (5 billion?). Donors would then find alternative targets for their donations, and other universities would benefit.

By: blackminorca

blackminorca — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:25:20 +0000

Harvard should die a thousand deaths NOW.

Ukrainian Americans funded a research institute there many years ago and after many years of silence on the question of communist genocide, they have just sponsored a seminar to announce “there is no smoking gun”.

http://cybercossack.com/?p=853

Att: Chinese Americans! Expect the “Mao Cafe” at Harvard Yard before this bastion of leftist/relativist obfuscation tells the truth about the 60’s.

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2008/01/samizdata_quote_295.html