Posted on 04/01/2016 8:20:47 AM PDT by RightGeek
Or at minimum, ending “wealth hoarding” by forcing “well-endowed private institutions [to] share their assets”
Remedying individual wealth and income inequality is the central rallying cry of the Democratic Party and candidates, and progressive activists.
Bernie Sanders has made wealth redistribution a centerpiece of his campaign, which is inspiring college students.
Even Hillary Clinton, who along with her husband amassed a fortune in the tens of millions of dollars through speaking fees on campuses and for Wall Street, is singing the same tune.
One overlooked area of wealth inequality is at the college level — some schools have amassed billion dollar plus endowments while others scrape for funds to meet operating expenses.
[Table of large endowments snipped]
Now two Chicago-area professors are calling for nationalizing private universities, or at minimum, that universities like U. Chicago redistribute their endowments by supporting other schools, Private universities should stop wealth-hoarding and share:
A snapshot from Chicago: In the past few weeks, as faculty and staff at Chicago State University reviewed their pink slips, and those at Northeastern Illinois University learned about mandatory furloughs amounting to 20 percent pay cuts, University of Chicago announced a $35 million gift from the founder of an investment firm to establish a “new think tank to research urban issues.” It received another $10 million dollar donation from the Pritzker family to fund “Urban Labs” that will support research addressing the “big challenges cities face.”
In fact, these donations are one of the challenges. Another is what can only be termed “wealth-hoarding” by private universities.
Our criticism of these large donations to the tax-exempt University of Chicago, which has a $7.5 billion dollar endowment, are undoubtedly sour grapes: We teach at institutions of higher education experiencing endless belt tightening and wage losses, and which, like most public colleges and universities, have no big donors on the horizon….
In this context, offering mass amounts of private wealth to already hugely wealthy private institutions is scandalous….
Our modest proposal, then, is that the University of Chicago and similarly well-endowed private institutions should share their assets with Chicago State, Northeastern Illinois and other struggling public schools….
Or, better yet, why not nationalize the private universities so that all students in Chicago, from all communities, can benefit from their excellent resources?
Research isn’t necessary to understand that sharing, not hoarding, is central to solving the “urban problems” of the day.
You will, of course, be *shocked* at the areas in which the professors teach:
Erica R. Meiners is a professor of education and gender and women’s studies at Northeastern Illinois University. Therese Quinn is an associate professor of art history and director of museum and exhibition studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Somewhere, a certain retired professor at U. Illinois – Chicago is smiling.
(picture of Bill Ayres)
Harvard endowment is 50 billion plus if memory serves... This might drive the Ivy League back to sanity.
Everybody wants a government job...it’s BETTER than tenure.
;^)
Good luck with that, morons.
The Ivy league schools are all for redistribution of our wealth, but forget about laying a hand on their endowments.
“Robin Hood” on a National scale.
The profs are as insane as the dainty snowflakes they indoctrinate.
I imagine those two professors are better off than most Chicagoans. They should set an example.
Nationalize Everything !!
What about, NO!
These professors should be fired from their jobs and then executed as the threat that they pose to our nation.
Universities are largely bloated over-funded institutions of liberal indoctrination and groupthink. THEY are the only ones who think they don’t have enough money.
I don’t have a dime’s worth of sympathy for them.
There is nothing at all stopping public universities from building endowments. All they have to do is turn out successful and charitable graduates. My old alma mater, LSU, has been quite successful at this. The difficulty that public schools face is that, as they build income from endowments, the politicians reduce their public funding and put it to other uses.
This is what happens when the US Constitution is no longer in effect......teachers disregard it, students were never taught it...politicians abuse it....the King wins!
How about privatizing the public universities instead?
Nationalizing is stealing.
A government job, you say?
Just like in the Army, Navy, Marines...
The pay in the army; they say is mighty fine!
They give thirty dollars, and they take back twentynine...
Same for the Marines, then they charge you for uniforms!
They created those who would ‘share the wealth’, so I have no sympathy for them.......................
The USSA continues along the path to completion.
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