From TPM Reader XX …
Sometimes analogies illuminate but sometimes they don’t. Docs go into the business knowing the high likelihood of confronting danger-to-oneself at some point over career, if not from a pandemic than from a “routine” infectious agent that takes a virulent turn. Universities at least in the US are not built and financed in a way to take account of the risk of an authoritarian “burn it down” mood in the national leadership which is prepared to proceed in a lawless, destructive way.
Just last night I had a discussion with a colleague who fervently argued that the Univ should tap the endowment, borrow from the banks, etc., hold out until the mid-terms banking on a party change in the Congress, the Josh Marshall program. Today I raised these points with another colleague who pointed out that the government had many financial tools other than the grants that are now being withheld. Higher education has a budget model that depends on many international students. Indeed, higher ed is one of the leading US exports — services to be sure, but it counts in the overall balance of trade. The students, “foreign students,” typically pay full freight (yes, we are educating the next generation of elites from all over the world, especially China, increasingly India, but all over). If the government decided to slow-walk visas for international students wanting to matriculate at a particular institution, it would be financially painful quite quickly. The government could declare a particular institution ineligible for Pell grants or, even more drastically, federally-supported student loans. On the table is the possibility of an endowment income tax that would hit those institutions otherwise in the best financial position to resist. So we are more in the position of the law firms: we could resist but it would wreck the place and not just for a short period of time.
Your idea about the endowments and “independence” is wrong, or, at least, not part of the original deal. The endowments are mainly for two things: first, to fund research and the creation of knowledge in a way that doesn’t depend on cross-subsidy from tuition and second, to provide tuition subsidies to people who, if admitted, couldn’t afford the tuition, that is, to work towards equality of opportunity. Some of the endowment is general purpose so the income is fungible but most of it comes through gifts that are restricted in some way.
The irony is that MAGA is angry with the humanities but the withheld grants for the most part support biomedical science. Go figure.
I can’t tell you how much it burns me up that this is all being done in the name of “protecting the Jews.”
The ones who really ought to be up in arms are the alumni of these institutions. They damn well should know better and, if these institutions really are about educating the elites, they should have power if they were to raise their voices loud and clear.
[Ed. Note: In consultation with the author, this email has been lightly edited to remove references that might identify the author or academic institution.]
