[freedumb2003]

>>huh?

Harvard has an endowment of $32 billion!<<

You usually can’t use endowments to pay for expenses. They are for special projects and scholarships.

Also, a lot of the debt they are talking about is long-term debt. You don’t pay for that with endowments, but out of the general operating fund.

[jjotto]

I smell a plan to scam taxpayers.

[muawiyah]

Harvard has been using its endowment to pay tuition for decades! You are probably thinking of endowments set up for state or public schools ~ there may be restrictions, but not private schools like Harvard.

Some public universities have seperately incorporated and administered FOUNDATIONS that have whatever rules they want. Indiana, a heavily endowed public university, and University of Texas, almost as heavily endowed, benefit from such arrangements.

In digging up facts about how much illegal aliens with in-state tuition were going to cost Texas U and Texas Tech it seemed to me the endowments there paid mostly for institutional upkeep, but there was some directed funding for various 'chairs' ~ and that always takes a load off the school's need for tuition, so it ain't all roof repairs!

[GeronL]

special projects and scholarships?

Harvard and Yale would never use their funds to benefits students. They could give every student free tuition if they wanted but won’t.

Harvard and Yale Endowments are exempted from the 5% rule so why not let them pay their debts with the money? If these “endowments” don’t have to abide by the same rules as other endowments and are invested in for-profit ventures, then what is the point in not letting them pay debt with it?

[SgtHooper]

Oh hell, these maroons are supposed to be our best and brightest. Did they not learn the American way of simply raiding the endowment and leaving IOUs?