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Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

(news.mit.edu)
581 points gnabgib | 8 comments | 20 Nov 24 16:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.896s | source | bottom
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araes ◴[20 Nov 24 18:26 UTC] No.42196753[source]▶
Started looking and found out there's some much worse, and far more obvious cases that need to implement these reforms. [1]

UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000 endowment fund that went up +170% over 10 years while Philadelphia rots with drug use, poverty, and gun violence.

BTW, amazing site to be horrified by gun violence (and vaguely fascinated). Look upon the awfulness of Philadelphia. [2] Sitting in their safe little haven while East and South is wounding murder land with overlapping murder / wounding statistics. (12k from 2014-2023, 190/100000 urban) [3] Northwestern and the violence everywhere South in Chi-town is maybe a personal second choice. ($13,700,000,000, +74%, 26.9k, 280/100000 urban) [4][5]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...

[2] (Guns, Philadelphia) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...

[3] (Location, UPenn) https://www.google.com/maps/place/University+of+Pennsylvania...

[4] (Guns, Chicago) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...

[5] (Location, Northwestern) https://www.google.com/maps/place/Northwestern+University/@4...

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ciupicri ◴[20 Nov 24 19:25 UTC] No.42197243[source]▶
So if a university has money, learning there should be free?

If you don't have guns, you won't have gun violence, but I guess the second amendment won't be changed any time soon.

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tdeck ◴[20 Nov 24 19:37 UTC] No.42197348[source]▶
> So if a university has money, learning there should be free?

Not an unreasonable proposition. The purpose of the university is ostensibly to provide an education, not to continue hoarding more and more money.

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JumpCrisscross ◴[20 Nov 24 20:01 UTC] No.42197546[source]▶
> purpose of the university is ostensibly to provide an education

One of the purposes. They’re also centres for learning and research and repositories of knowledge.

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1. tdeck ◴[20 Nov 24 21:54 UTC] No.42198515[source]▶
If they were spending the money on those things, this might be an argument. But they're not spending it; they're hoarding it.
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2. blackhawkC17 ◴[20 Nov 24 22:13 UTC] No.42198659[source]▶
$9 billion annually [1] qualifies as not spending it, I guess. I wish people actually checked figures before ranting online.

1- https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/231...

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3. jjk166 ◴[20 Nov 24 22:24 UTC] No.42198751[source]▶
I don't think you understand how endowments work.

It's not a pile of gold sitting in a vault on campus. It's an account which is productively invested and generating returns which are what's actually used for funding operations. A $20 billion endowment would be expected to produce about $1 billion per year, or around 20% of the annual operating budget. They need to bring in about $4 Billion more dollars per year to keep the lights on.

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4. tzs ◴[20 Nov 24 22:30 UTC] No.42198808[source]▶
They are spending it. On average they spend about 5% of it per year. In 2023 that was $975 million. It goes 53% to instruction, 22% to health care, 15% to student aid, and 10% to research, academic support, and other services.

The point of an endowment is to provide long term support for whatever the purpose is of that endowment. That is done by investing it and using the investment earnings for that purpose.

5. JumpCrisscross ◴[20 Nov 24 23:24 UTC] No.42199208[source]▶
> If they were spending the money on those things, this might be an argument. But they're not spending it; they're hoarding it

There is something ironic about people who work in start-ups arguing for endowments to be spent down. Who do you think gives money to the VC funds?

6. tdeck ◴[20 Nov 24 23:31 UTC] No.42199266[source]▶
I do understand actually, and my argument is that this wouldn't be acceptable in any other category of nonprofit, so why is it acceptable for universities? If the Red Cross decided to take donations and then hoard a 20 billion dollar endowment while also charging top dollar for disaster relief, people wouldn't accept that as a legitimate strategy. Why is it suddenly OK when a university does it?
7. tdeck ◴[20 Nov 24 23:37 UTC] No.42199317[source]▶
The page you linked shows their revenue is $9.93B/year and is greater than their expenses. So clearly they're not spending down the principal.
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8. blackhawkC17 ◴[21 Nov 24 06:06 UTC] No.42201575{3}[source]▶
That’s because donors won’t let them drain all the principal in a few years.

UPenn’s revenue includes “sales of assets” and “investment income,” i.e., taking some part of the endowment annually to fund their operations.