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

(news.mit.edu)
581 points gnabgib | 3 comments | 20 Nov 24 16:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.631s | source
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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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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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1. 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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2. 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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3. blackhawkC17 ◴[21 Nov 24 06:06 UTC] No.42201575[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.