[HN Gopher] Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?
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Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?
Author : sneakerblack
Score : 72 points
Date : 2025-04-30 14:36 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| See https://archive.ph/GkGWE
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Free speech" is when the President unilaterally withholds
| research grants from universities, based on statements made by
| students (not faculty)?
| ty6853 wrote:
| This is the double edge sword of moving away from voluntary
| transaction in the market and towards government-imposed
| funding. The government takes away your ability to choose what
| to fund, holds the purse, then smacks the purse at you filled
| with the weight of your own money.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| The government, with laws as written, has _more_ restrictions
| on when it can pull money than private parties, due to its
| _legal obligation_ to be content-of-speech-neutral. We are
| discovering that United Stares law is meaningless.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Law everywhere is meaningless unless "we have to follow the
| law" is a cultural norm. This is why norms are more
| fundamental and more important than laws.
| ty6853 wrote:
| You are discovering this. It wasn't that long ago when the
| national guard took tuition money away from Kent State in
| the form of executing their students for free speech.
| timewizard wrote:
| Federal law is insanely complex. It's written by humans in
| an abstract legislative process so there's not even a
| guarantee that it won't conflict with _itself_. We have,
| several times, added laws to the register that were later
| determined to be in conflict with the Constitution itself.
|
| This is why courts exist.
|
| This is also why libertarians exist.
| scottiebarnes wrote:
| I'm not sure this is a "free market choices" problem. Some
| institutions like education should be funded by government,
| in part or in whole.
|
| The government threatening to take away that funding based on
| "taste" is more of a problem of authoritarianism.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| They might also be happy for an excuse to implement some of these
| policies and have the administration as scapegoat.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes some of them have said as much...
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I am not a fan of the orange man.
|
| But I think its an interesting question if the feds should be
| funding rich Ivies with small numbers of students vs more
| efficient state universities which educated 100s of thousands
| each at a fraction of the cost per student.
|
| All of the Ivy League combined educate 65k undergrads. SUNY by
| comparison educates 5x that many at a tuition of 1/5th to 1/10th
| depending on in/out of state and community vs vs 4 year college.
|
| Obviously what he is doing is punitive. BUT, I think the constant
| focus in the press on the Ivys when we talk about education is a
| huge distraction from how we are actually going to improve
| access, quality & cost to education in this county.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The feds aren't funding ivies for the purpose of education,
| they're funding researchers who happen to work at the ivies to
| do research.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Multiple people pointing this out, and absolutely right.
|
| Some question though of how all the research grants do kind
| of cross-subsidize the education in a way as it pays for
| research professors, their graduate staff, etc? Otherwise why
| do we collocate research and teaching?
| nine_k wrote:
| > _why do we collocate research and teaching?_
|
| Because we want the same scientists who do, or recently
| did, advanced research to teach students? Because we want
| students to be involved in actual real genuine cutting-edge
| research? I suppose this is the logic.
|
| As a student back in the day I worked in a university lab,
| and it was pretty interesting to play a role in solving
| problems that don't have answers in the end of a textbook.
| foobiekr wrote:
| "Otherwise why do we collocate research and teaching?"
|
| Because you need a second generation of researchers.
| jasonhong wrote:
| This was recently discussed on Hacker News about two weeks
| ago.
|
| See this blog post by Steve Blank talking about the rise of
| research universities and why the USA is a science
| powerhouse. https://steveblank.com/2025/04/15/how-the-u-s-
| became-a-scien...
|
| And the discussion on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692360
|
| Also, pragmatically, it's a system that has yielded
| incredible ROI since WW2, in terms of new industries, new
| companies, jobs, science, economic gains, productivity
| gains, and national security. The US university system is
| the envy of the entire world, and it's being targeted for
| dismantling by very petty, cruel, and incompetent people.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| We did so because having all laboratories be government run
| was inefficient so in WW2 we decided to split the costs
| with private and public universities who will maintain
| labs, equipment, and the federal government will pay
| directly for the research.
| joshuanapoli wrote:
| So far, the funding in question is research grants. There's an
| argument that research is more effective at the universities
| that have concentrated the best researchers.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| There's also an argument that public funds should go to
| public schools.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Yes, complementing an observation that there are many
| funding sources that aren't the Federal Government
|
| From my conversations with people, this university funding
| topic is a mere proxy for their disdain with Trump on every
| topic, in a fairly incoherent rehash of random headlines.
| Have found very few people willing to discuss how
| universities are funded like this article is.
|
| The last 75 years of interacting with the federal
| government and proletariat will be a footnote in these
| school's half millenium history. It won't even be
| controversial. Non-upper class people won't be using them
| to get into corporations, a mere happenstance of the last
| 75 years and not what these universities view themselves
| as. Non-upper class people won't be worried about how many
| of them are in, and what criteria is involved, and how
| fair. And the Federal government won't be using their one
| avenue of funding to bother them about it. 75 out of 400,
| and then 1,000 years. A footnote. Probably laughed about.
|
| "Remember when we had $50bn from daytrading tax free and
| got the US government to pay for our toys every year until
| a total populist uprising occurred at the expense of the
| entire nation. Other People's Money! Rowing club later?"
| op00to wrote:
| What about private research institutes? They don't really
| educate anyone, not in the way that people think of when
| they say education. Why must all funds only go to public
| organizations?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| why should the government pay for that? If people want to
| do private research thats up to them
| op00to wrote:
| Why should the government pay for research? Because the
| private sector can some times move faster than a public
| research lab. They may have different capabilities. They
| have different strengths. They may be more efficient in
| certain situations. Why is this surprising to you?
| jimbokun wrote:
| Top US state schools have a lot of really good researchers.
| mmooss wrote:
| And those researchers at state schools will tell you that
| many of the Ivys, and other elite schools such as MIT and
| Caltech, are better.
|
| Some state schools are among the elite, such as Berkeley,
| of course, and UCLA, Michigan ... depending on how large
| your 'elite' is.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Most of the money is research grants, not for training
| undergrads.
| cg5280 wrote:
| Many of the "good" universities in general seem more focused on
| prestige and acceptance rates than they do educating the
| masses. The Ivies could significantly expand the sizes of their
| student bodies (and to their credit they do make some content
| accessible online), but they don't because a lot of the value
| of a Harvard education is the exclusivity and the social
| network it gets you into.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| And therein lies why a lot of Trump's base has a massive
| problem with them.
|
| To be fair, the exclusive social network _very much_ includes
| Trump, but it spent most of the last 50 years bringing itself
| capital at the expense of Trump 's base.
| e40 wrote:
| It's unfortunate that a rational discussion could not be had
| before the cuts were made. I can see a scenario where you and I
| and many others agree with cuts to many organizations.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Bureaucratic organizations and special interests there are
| entrenched. The people managing some of these endowments are
| getting annual compensations competitive with the best hedge
| funds. If we had a rational discussion they'd just work to
| run out the clock and keep the status quo.
| senderista wrote:
| Funding teaching is not the same as funding research. Some of
| the best research talent is concentrated in the Ivies.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But I think its an interesting question if the feds should be
| funding rich Ivies with small numbers of students vs more
| efficient state universities which educated 100s of thousands
| each at a fraction of the cost per student.
|
| The funding at issue is research funding, not educational
| funding, and it goes to both kinds of universities (vastly
| more, in aggregate, to state universities than Ivies.)
|
| > Obviously what he is doing is punitive. BUT, I think the
| constant focus in the press on the Ivys when we talk about
| education is a huge distraction from how we are actually going
| to improve access, quality & cost to education in this county.
|
| If research funding is used as a lever to establish political
| control, those things literally do not matter, since whatever
| universities survive will simply be tools of totalitarian
| indoctrination by the regime.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > BUT, I think the constant focus in the press on the Ivys when
| we talk about education is a huge distraction from how we are
| actually going to improve access, quality & cost to education
| in this county.
|
| Because the entire discussion around colleges of all sizes, who
| gets to go and who pays has been turned entirely into yet
| another fucking stupid culture war issue by Republicans,
| putting rural/tradesman "real" Americans against the "educated
| coastal elites" of which it is far easier to cast Ivy league
| schools, professors and students as, rather than your local
| grocery store stock boy who is attending a tech school to go
| into STEM.
|
| At this point the notion of the actual issue as in: "how we are
| actually going to improve access, quality & cost to education"
| is barely a factor in it. It's just about pitting poor people
| against other poor people and a handful of rich nepo-babies who
| are so insulated from the consequences of our system they might
| as well not be considered to be part of it.
|
| For anyone interested, college used to be nearly in totality
| funded by the state, not per student, but via the grant system.
| Our parents will talk about "working their way through college"
| working as waitstaff, because that was once an _achievable
| thing:_ to work while you studied and pay your tuition, and
| graduate with little if any debt, and go on to do all sorts of
| things my generation struggles to do, like buy a home and a
| car, and not a run down refrigerator box and an old wreck from
| the side of the road that barely runs, no. They got to buy good
| homes, at fair prices, and cars that were if not new, really
| close to it.
|
| Then as with everything Reagan fucked it up, the "no more free
| lunch" lobby got to add another notch to their bedpost as they
| set about destroying yet another fucking thing funded with
| public money that was doing exactly what it was supposed to be
| doing to pass yet another goddamn tax cut and worsen the
| ability of America to compete on the global stage.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| RE: our parents working their way through college, I think
| two things happened at least, yes.
|
| Reagan gutted education spending.
|
| But also the bifurcation of blue vs white collar wages really
| accelerated through the last 40 years. That is the spread
| between what my dad made working at a record store vs the
| professor/admin staff/etc at his college made increased
| tremendously. Think about it - minimum wage at federal level
| has only doubled in the last 40 years, while some quick
| googling looks like professors make 5-10x what they made 40
| years ago (as most white collar has).
|
| Plus all the discussion about the bloating of college non-
| teaching administrative staffing.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > But also the bifurcation of blue vs white collar wages
| really accelerated through the last 40 years. That is the
| spread between what my dad made working at a record store
| vs the professor/admin staff/etc at his college made
| increased tremendously. Think about it - minimum wage at
| federal level has only doubled in the last 40 years, while
| some quick googling looks like professors make 5-10x what
| they made 40 years ago (as most white collar has).
|
| Which can also be blamed on Reagan specifically and the
| larger "trickle down" movement he inspired, which gutted
| protections for unionized labor and badmouthed unions in
| general so they became a dirty word in American politics,
| only very recently finally getting back at least some
| credibility.
|
| That old meme comes to mind where someone is like "my hobby
| is putting Reagan's face on graphs of economic data the
| year he got elected" and watching everything just go
| completely tits up after that point.
| zanecodes wrote:
| For the curious, the graphs in question: https://daughter
| numberthree.blogspot.com/2020/01/graphing-re...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Oh man I didn't know there was a full blog post too!
| ryan93 wrote:
| How credulous do you have to be to attribute education
| funding to a president from 40 years ago?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| By my count, roughly 75% of the US electorate were (or
| could have been) educated in the last 40 years.
| mmooss wrote:
| Awhile ago, a graph showed tuition tightly and negatively
| correlated to government funding.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > Because the entire discussion around colleges of all sizes,
| who gets to go and who pays has been turned entirely into yet
| another fucking stupid culture war issue by Republicans,
| putting rural/tradesman "real" Americans against the
| "educated coastal elites" of which it is far easier to cast
| Ivy league schools, professors and students as, rather than
| your local grocery store stock boy who is attending a tech
| school to go into STEM.
|
| That can't happen in a vacuum, though.
|
| 50 years ago, there was a far narrower gap between the two
| groups. Now it's expanding. That "no more free lunch" crowd
| was that "educated coastal elite" of the time. Remember,
| Reagan was elected governor of California twice.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Funnily enough, when the law was passed giving the president
| the authority to meddle in university governance, Reagan
| vetoed it. And the left, in congress and the senate, forced
| it through.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| It isn't about that efficiency. I teach at a community college
| and my state's republican supermajority just cut our budget by
| 10%.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Oh absolutely agreed, the GOP is anti-education however you
| slice it.
|
| In a less partisan world, it would be nice to see a version
| of this that was more about efficient allocation of education
| dollars rather than an attack on education.
| tencentshill wrote:
| It's one of the only ways people can still get into "The Club"
| without having a lineage of wealthy connections.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Not a selling point.
|
| The Ivies do a hell of a lot more _for_ 'The Club' than for
| the people not in it.
|
| (To be clear, I don't think giving Trump the authority to
| pull hundreds of millions in funding if they teach things he
| doesn't like, or allow anti-genocide protests etc, is in any
| way a solution to the above issue.)
| etrautmann wrote:
| This framing is a little strange, since these universities
| serve multiple purposes. Much of this funding is for scientific
| research, which is somewhat distinct from the undergraduate
| teaching mission.
| ahahahahah wrote:
| > All of the Ivy League combined educate 65k undergrads. SUNY
| by comparison educates 5x that many
|
| What a weird comparison. Yes, picking a group of universities
| that comprises 64 campuses is going to have more students than
| a group with a small fraction of that.
| mattlutze wrote:
| Too many people think these are funds to just run the
| universities. By and large, what is being withheld are funds
| for research.
|
| Federally-funded academic science often looks like:
| 1. The university + government fund/run a project 2.
| Project creates new knowledge (cool!) 3. The government
| gets a pretty awesome license to use that knowledge 4.
| The government more often than not gives that knowledge away
| (or offers great accessible licensing), so that 5.
| Private industry can adapt, apply and commercialize the
| knowledge, driving new GDP growth and opportunities for
| improving life, etc.
|
| Withholding these funds ends the research projects, because
| Universities are not startup incubators. So the research stops,
| and one of the highest returning pipelines of new GDP growth
| for the US dries up--unless today, the professors and
| universities kiss the president's ring and promise to wipe out
| 50-100 years of human rights improvements.
| lowercased wrote:
| It's that last step - 5 - which I think is a missing piece of
| the discussion. A lot of private company pharma and medical
| research is often doing the 'last mile' work that started in
| university research programs. Stuff that looks promising is
| picked up and commercialized, but there's usually significant
| work the research people have done before big commercial
| players take it to market. They're not doing all their
| research from scratch - they're taking the best bits funded
| by our government research programs and bringing them to
| market. Cutting university research will damage the private
| sector pretty quickly.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| It even goes beyond the concrete research that eventually
| gets commercialized. One pharma startup I am familiar with
| has much of its research-related leadership and board
| staffed with very successful current or former academic
| researchers who used to run their own labs or even
| departments. We cannot shift skill acquisition like that
| over night to private industry.
| timewizard wrote:
| On #3 "government gets a pretty awesome license" seems
| disingenuous. From what I've witnessed some specific agencies
| get to use that license in a rather limited way. It's often
| not broadly available to the public and commercial rights
| tend to be reserved to the University. Is that actually what
| most people would think of as "pretty awesome?"
|
| On #4, "more often than not" and "offers great accessible
| licensing" seems equally disingenuous. Further, why should
| any of us have to license technology or patents that were
| primarily funded by tax revenue? Shouldn't that just be
| automatically and fully open? When the government decides to
| sequester that knowledge what process do I have to challenge
| that?
|
| On #5, outside of pharmaceutical companies, what are these
| new GDP growth and returning pipelines that actually get
| created and impact citizens directly?
| trollbridge wrote:
| Yeah, my experience is the patent gets licenced to some
| private entity that then squeezes a profit of it. The
| public sure doesn't "benefit".
|
| I'd prefer to see such funding going to state universities,
| not private ones.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The public benefits by access to treatments that wouldn't
| exist had the research not been done.
|
| On the other hand I agree that research funded by tax
| dollars should not be patented and should be available to
| all.
| pavon wrote:
| Under the Bayh-Dole Act state universities do the exact
| same thing. They patent their research and license it to
| private companies. Their discoveries are no more or less
| open to the public than with private universities.
| treis wrote:
| This is somewhat disingenuous. Something like half of the
| grant is handed over to the University as overhead. Much of
| that is legit to cover things like labs but a lot of it goes
| to a cover a massive amount of administrative bloat.
|
| Also, nobody really objects to the research that leads
| directly to stuff private industry can use. That's not what
| people want to cut.
| ss2003 wrote:
| That is disingenuous. People absolutely want to cut all
| University research without regard as to what it for.
| xracy wrote:
| The overhead is what makes research possible. How do you do
| research without a lab, or a building?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You include expenses for lab and facilities in your grant
| budget rather than as "overhead" ?
| xracy wrote:
| That's not how facilities work or are accounted for.
|
| Facilities are common to all of the university. It
| doesn't make sense to force this individual requirement
| on each grant when the University has hundreds of ways it
| is using a given building or lab equipment.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| Are you thinking "facility" == "building" and "rooms"?
|
| The lab equipment is constantly evolving, needs repair,
| maintenance, on-site training. Perhaps you are thinking
| of a lab bench that is going to last the lifetime of the
| building and I am thinking of a computer server, 3D
| scanner, 3D printer, MRI machine (small lab system), etc.
|
| My son has taken second year organic chemistry classes
| that had more computer hardware and software than I ever
| had in my electrical engineering/computer science classes
| in the early 1990s. The software might be open source, or
| might have ongoing software license fees. While those
| specific teaching labs should be paid for through
| tuition, imagine similar or more advanced versions in the
| research labs.
| treis wrote:
| >Much of that is legit to cover things like labs
| eastbound wrote:
| I object to the research. Not in the theory, but in
| practice, there is so much influence from those
| researchers' political opinion over what they find (and who
| they engage to find it) that we'll have to work for decades
| to remove the bias from the studies.
|
| For example, biology researchers haven't yet called out the
| gender studies as not being a science (in the sense of the
| scientific process). How can you say research is reliable
| when it can't separate the good from the bad?
|
| Every other discipline refuses to denounce and call out
| sectors which aren't scientific. They are not scientists if
| they cannot clearly spell out the good from the bad
| science. Worse, they're most probably a majority to agree
| with this false science.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| Antedote:
|
| When I was a PhD student at the University of British
| Columbia in the Department of Computer Science research
| grant proposals included budgets for overhead. This was
| often, if I recall correctly, 10% of the overall equipment
| and salary budget. This was deemed a tax collected by the
| department and used to:
|
| - pay IT staff salaries - pay IT hardware and service costs
| (storage, communication) - etc
|
| Other costs on the research grant would include:
|
| - hardware purchases: personal computers, specialized
| equipment, compute and storage servers - graduate student
| and postdoctoral student salaries - travel costs to
| conferences for students - consumables (if any)
|
| Again, in Canada, there are various types of research
| grants. For example, the "Research Tools and Instruments
| grants program" will pay the entire cost of the equipment.
| This includes: shipping, customs fees, warranty/service
| contracts, software licensing, on-site training.
|
| https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ResearchPortal-
| PortailDeRecher...
|
| Note that travel, salary and benefits, consumables,
| renovations, lab infrastructure are not allowed.
|
| For other types of grants the institution's "tax rate" is
| usually specified by the Department of Research, and can be
| as high as 25%. UBC hides it's rates behind a portal, but
| Simon Fraser University has a description of them:
| https://www.sfu.ca/research/researcher-resources/fund-my-
| res...
|
| I won't speak to the amount of "administrative bloat" that
| universities have experienced during my two decades post
| graduation. While it exists, a tax rate of 25% seems quite
| reasonable when you consider the overall costs of research
| at a university compared to equivalent commercial
| office/lab space.
| nkurz wrote:
| The numbers you are suggesting do indeed seem reasonable,
| and if those were the overheads being used, they would
| probably be justified. But I think current overheads are
| often much higher. Here for example is a recent article
| saying that the proposed 15% cap on overhead for NIH
| grants would be disastrous for universities like Harvard
| that currently have a 69% negotiated overhead rate:
| https://deliprao.substack.com/p/understanding-
| nihs-15-overhe...
|
| To be fair, I'm not sure if that author is using the same
| definition that you are. In the article, they clarify
| that a 69% rate means that a $1,000,000 grant has an
| extra $690,000 paid to Harvard. Still, the idea that the
| rates should be the same for all institutions and should
| be closer to the numbers you remember certainly seems
| worth considering.
| sampo wrote:
| > By and large, what is being withheld are funds for
| research.
|
| I don't know precisely, but I would assume the universities
| take about 50% to 60% of the granted research funding as
| administrative overhead, and only what remains goes to the
| actual research.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| I don't know either but I would assume 99% goes to the
| research and 0.01% goes to overhead. Of course, both of us
| are making up numbers without any citations or evidence, so
| the numbers are meaningless.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| The feds are funding research, which elite schools have the
| best faculty and scholars who are conducting the very best
| research. May as well as why are VC's funding promising
| startups instead of less promising ones, when those promising
| ones have already wealthy founders who have exited their
| previous venture.
| mmooss wrote:
| Universities have two roles: education and research. The
| funding is overwhelmingly for research and it's going to those
| that provide the best return on investment. Should cancer
| research funding go to your local community college?
|
| Educating the best and brightest is also of special value, but
| that is beside the point.
| physPop wrote:
| I disagree -- the funding isn't ROI based at all. Heck NIH
| doesn't even really audit how well the funds were spent, how
| could they? They don't even really assess if the research had
| impact, save for counting journal articles and impact
| factors, which are in themselves poor proxies for quality of
| work (and easily gamed).
| mmooss wrote:
| What makes you say all that? Grants are hard to get, highly
| competitive with difficult standards.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Comparing tuition is silly, IMO. Lots of people don't pay full-
| price at private universities, and _nobody_ who is in-state
| pays the full-price for public universities.
|
| If you care about efficiency, then divide the budget by the
| number of students.
|
| Harvard has a budget of about $9B, which is about 4-5x larger
| on a per-student basis than a few public universities I
| compared (I couldn't find the SUNY budget with 30s of
| searching, you are welcome to provide that info if you have
| it).
| amazingamazing wrote:
| private schools shouldn't be getting public money. shocking
| people disagree. yes they do research that benefits the public.
| so does Meta and Google, who don't get public money. public money
| should go to public schools.
|
| especially considering that the PIs who do the work in the
| private school scenario effectively boost the private school's
| clout with public money, but these private schools do not
| increase accessibility by opening up admission further.
|
| that said, trump is also doing this for the wrong reasons, sadly.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Meta and Google absolutely do get public money, for another
| commonly known example, every single one of Elon Musk's
| companies have gotten significant funding paid for through our
| taxes -- government contracts, subsidies, grants, you name it
| amazingamazing wrote:
| those also shouldn't - at least without the government
| getting an equity stake.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| don't really disagree, but also this is a "get money out of
| politics" level change -- next to impossible because there
| are piles of money to be made by the people in charge
| djtriptych wrote:
| Meta and Google definitely get a ton of public money.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| they shouldn't.
| e40 wrote:
| _> private schools shouldn 't be getting public money. shocking
| people disagree. yes they do research that benefits the public.
| so does Meta and Google, who don't get public money. public
| money should go to public schools._
|
| Those two are not the same. Research funded by Meta/Google
| doesn't benefit the public in the same way as research in Ivies
| (and non-Ivies).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is the government paying for a service.
|
| Should a private cement company get public money for delivering
| cement?
| amazingamazing wrote:
| > This is the government paying for a service.
|
| a service public schools can do.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| not as well. Grants are a competitive process.
|
| When building a highway, the government should put out
| notice and buy the best offering.
|
| Im not sure why you would want government buying sub-par
| research just because it comes from a public school
| amazingamazing wrote:
| it would solve themselves. all of the good PIs at the
| good private schools would go to the good public schools.
| there's no actual inherent reason why private schools are
| bad like you're implying.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the idea that money and fix any problem,
| and that there are no inherent differences.
|
| Setting that aside, why do you think it is even desirable
| to limit funding to public institutions in the first
| place?
|
| Seems like you're starting from this position and moving
| backwards.
|
| If Public schools are superior, why haven't they already
| out competed private institutions? They have a pretty
| huge advantage from additional tax revenue.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Sure, and if there were a law proposed in Congress to
| restrict federal research funding to public institutions
| and bar all private institutions, we could debate the
| merits of that.
|
| That is not, however, what is happening. Institutions,
| without regard to whether they are public or private, are
| having research funding used as a lever to secure adherence
| to the political ideology of the ruling party, unilaterally
| by the executive branch.
|
| The attempt to make this a debate about public vs private
| institutions is a distraction from and cover for that.
| op00to wrote:
| Public works departments can deliver the cement. It's more
| efficient to have the cement hauler do so.
| op00to wrote:
| What about private research institutes which do no education of
| undergraduates? What do you base your pronouncement on?
| Kapura wrote:
| This framing conveniently ignores the question of whether the
| president should have the authority to single-handedly withhold
| funding for universities, broadly considered to be one of the
| foundational pillars of America's strength in the 20th century.
| While I think it's interesting and answers the specific question
| it raises, it's wild that the economist has just accepted that
| the president has dictatorial powers.
| catapart wrote:
| Yeeep. This is the only thing worth knowing about this whole
| mess. The people trust their reps to handle the money, and the
| reps are the only people who are supposed to be able to manage
| that money.
|
| Yet here we have tacit acceptance that the president can fuck
| with citizens' money just because he's in his feels about
| something. Absolute clownery.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| America is a democracy, not a bureaucracy. The executive branch
| is governed by a single representative elected by the people.
| It is becoming increasingly apparent that the people didn't
| make a great choice this time but our constitutional republic
| is also one of the foundational pillars of american strength
| and trump being an idiot doesn't change that.
|
| The judicial branch has authority to stop him but they're only
| supposed to use it if they are convinced that what he's doing
| is unconstitutional. Some of the executive branch's appointee's
| have authority over him but only in specific circumstances
| (such as 25th amendment) and they're usually in agreement with
| him since he gets to appoint them anyways. Otherwise, all
| authority in the executive branch effectively belongs to the
| president and random midlevel bureaucrats can only exercise it
| on his behalf.
| otterley wrote:
| This is true only to the extent that Congress delegates its
| power to the executive. Per Article I of the Constitution,
| Congress has the plenary power of the purse.
|
| So if it decides to spend $X on _something specific_ , it has
| to be spent on whatever that _something_ is. The President
| doesn 't have discretion in that case.
| ok_dad wrote:
| In fact, when Congress passes a budget, it's actually a law
| that must be executed by the executive. There are actually
| other laws against impoundment and against the executive
| changing the budget.
|
| Trump is literally breaking the law but no one really cares
| to discuss that anymore since the gish gallop has be so
| quick this term.
| otterley wrote:
| I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that Trump is breaking
| the law. I'm no expert in NSF funding, but Congress may
| well have delegated its authority over how the funds in
| the pool are to be allocated and distributed to the
| executive.
|
| If someone has more knowledge to contribute, that'd be
| most welcome.
| xracy wrote:
| Take a read of the constitution?
|
| Why do you assume that the person you're responding to is
| "jumping to conclusions." Feels like you're just ignoring
| what they have to say in the guise of "asking for more
| knowledge" when you don't actually know if they don't
| have the knowledge because of your own lack of expertise.
|
| https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-
| Development/Po...
| otterley wrote:
| > Why do you assume that the person you're responding to
| is "jumping to conclusions."
|
| Because they said "Trump is literally breaking the law."
| That hasn't been established yet.
|
| I happen to be an attorney as well as a hacker, and I
| worked in a Federal district court, so perhaps give me
| the benefit of the doubt that I just might know what I'm
| talking about. If you have legitimate questions of your
| own, I'd be happy to try to answer them.
| runako wrote:
| Clear example here is USAID. Congress has directed, as
| recently as March 2025, that a specific amount of funds
| be spent on the statutory goals of the US Agency for
| International Development. (I have not checked, but I am
| sure federal law also goes into some detail about what
| tasks USAID needs to perform.)
|
| I do not imagine it is congruent with the law to simply
| fire all the staff and shut down USAID (or "merge" it
| into State).
|
| The laws are all public and people are free to read that
| a few weeks ago, Congress directed the Executive to spend
| money as USAID for the statutory purposes behind USAID.
| That part is pretty clear.
| otterley wrote:
| The situations are a little different.
|
| With NSF grants, the question is whether the President
| can redistribute funding away from applicants affiliated
| with specific institutions he doesn't like (my first
| approximation: probably).
|
| With USAID, the question is whether the President has the
| authority to disband an entire Agency established and
| appropriated by Congress (22 U.S.C. 6563) (my first
| approximation: probably not).
| runako wrote:
| Point taken. I was mostly addressing the larger question
| of whether the Executive is breaking the law wrt
| appropriations. Likely yes.
|
| With science funding grants, the administration likely
| has latitude to make some changes, but the specifics of
| that latitude are going to be embedded in a thicket of
| overlapping statutes of different vintages.
|
| Without going through all the specific statutes, I relied
| on the suggestion that if they are okay breaking the law
| around USAID funding passed in March, they likely are not
| going to find religion and adhere to laws governing
| science funding. But I guess anything's possible.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I do not imagine it is congruent with the law to simply
| fire all the staff and shut down USAID (or "merge" it
| into State).
|
| The Fourth Circuit allowed the administration to proceed:
| https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/28/appeals-court-
| usaid...
|
| That is not a final word on the constitutionality of
| dissolving USAID, but it's an indication that the Court
| didn't believe plaintiffs had a high likelihood of
| success on the merits to justify the preliminary
| injunction.
| runako wrote:
| The recent SCOTUS opinion that the President's official
| actions are not bound by the laws of man does provide a
| clear line of sight to really any action taken by the
| Executive branch. So it may not really even be productive
| to discuss limits on Executive power anymore.
| rayiner wrote:
| That is in fact not what the Supreme Court said. It said
| that the President has immunity for "official acts," just
| like Congress members and judges.
|
| Say a judge dismisses an indictment of an accused
| murderer because the police didn't have a proper search
| warrant. Then the accused murderer kills someone else.
| That could fall within the letter of "negligent homicide"
| laws, but the judge can't be prosecuted for that because
| judges have absolute immunity for official acts.
|
| Similarly, a red state prosecutor could have tried to
| prosecute Biden for something like negligent homicide on
| the theory that his opening of the boarder was a
| negligent act that resulted in deaths. Obviously you
| can't do that, because the President has immunity for
| official acts. It would be completely insane if the
| President didn't have immunity. President do lots of
| things which cause people to be killed, property to be
| destroyed, etc. You could prosecute those as crimes if
| you literally applied the criminal laws.
| runako wrote:
| I agree with you here. I also think that (allegedly)
| ignoring federal statutes while reorganizing the
| government is pretty clearly an official act. So
| everything we are discussing is an official act.
|
| If the Executive isn't bound to follow federal
| appropriations laws, there's no principled reason why he
| should have to follow other federal laws. And as you
| show, the president has full criminal immunity as well.
|
| What other laws are there that might limit his conduct?
| I'm of the understanding that where we are now is the
| only potential check on Presidents going forward is
| impeachment and removal from office. It's a blunt
| instrument, but apparently there are no other applicable
| mechanisms.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| There are all kinds of laws that limit president's
| conduct, but the point is that there is no way to
| actually enforce these laws, other than voluntary
| compliance by the president and his government, and
| impeachment by legislature. This is by design, that's how
| the separation of powers works.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Well, it's not that simple. Yes, Congress passes the bill
| saying that X billions of dollars have to be spent on
| universities, but that bill does not name every single
| university in US as beneficiary. That's what executive
| branch is for: to work out the details of how to
| implement the law passed by Congress.
|
| So, Trump taking money from Harvard and giving it to say,
| a community college in Tampa is technically still correct
| implementation of the law. I mean, it all depends if he
| can defend his decision in court, because of course he
| cannot discriminate based on race, ethnicity, political
| affiliation etc.
| superturkey650 wrote:
| Why can't he discriminate on political affiliation?
| xracy wrote:
| Because our system would fall apart every 4 years when a
| different party started diverting money to their cronies.
|
| How corrupt do you want a nation to be?
| vaidhy wrote:
| But it is not illegal!! Morals or ethics do not
| necessarily determine if it is legal.
| otterley wrote:
| It may not be unlawful, but institutions work best when
| there is stability of practice, even across leadership
| changes. Otherwise, you can't do any long-range planning
| or undertake complex experiments or investments that
| could take years to bear fruit.
|
| We used to have a shared sense of custom and mores that
| helped preserve this stability. But that seems to be out
| the window now, and regrettably so.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| AIUI Congress has not passed a budget in a long time.
| They pass "continuing resolutions" and they fund broad
| categories of spending and leave the details up to the
| funded entities (which then falls under the executive
| branch).
|
| If Congress wants to fund something specific, they need
| to pass a law or budget that names that specific thing
| and how much they are appropriating. They aren't doing
| that.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >This is true only to the extent that Congress delegates
| its power to the executive.
|
| Directly or indirectly the people of the United States have
| power over all three branches. One can easily make strong
| arguments that the problem here is both that Congress as
| abdicated its powers to the executive (rather than
| delegated), and that the people have ignored that Congress
| should retain those powers while focusing on the presidency
| as the important election to the exclusion of all others.
|
| This has been going on for decades or longer.
|
| >So if it decides to spend $X on something specific, it has
| to be spent on whatever that something is. The President
| doesn't have discretion in that case.
|
| Sure. Definitely means he can't spend it on something else.
| But how much wiggle room is in this? Does it say on which
| day, hour, and minute it must be spent? Sure, it's probably
| tied at least to the fiscal year (in which case it needs to
| be spent by September, one would suppose), but that's
| months away. Does allocating a budget imply that it needs
| to be spent at all? If some bureau or department fails to
| spend all of its budget, has the president somehow
| committed some treason-adjacent crime, or is that just
| thriftiness? Are these funds earmarked for specific
| universities? What if he just goes shopping for alternative
| recipients?
|
| To say that he has no discretion at all is absurd, if that
| were the case then Congress would have mandated that these
| be automatic electronic bank transfers without any human
| intervention (or oversight). The nature of the job not only
| implies but practically demands some (if limited)
| discretion.
| bootsmann wrote:
| > If some bureau or department fails to spend all of its
| budget, has the president somehow committed some treason-
| adjacent crime, or is that just thriftiness?
|
| Yes, he has. It is not the presidents power to judge
| whether the money he spent in defiance of congress is
| sufficient, it is congress that holds this power. If
| congress thinks they should spend less, they can settle
| this by changing the budget. What would you say if the
| next democratic president simply refused to spend a
| single dollar assigned to ICE to "be thrifty"?
| otterley wrote:
| Well, it's unlikely to be "criminal" or "treason," but it
| is unconstitutional. An aggrieved party can seek redress
| from the court to compel the executive to transfer the
| provisioned monies.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >What would you say if the next democratic president
| simply refused to spend a single dollar assigned to ICE
| to "be thrifty"?
|
| I'd be thrilled. There's $6 billion that they spend on
| DEA every year that I'd be happy if it was just pocketed
| by Trump and spent on hookers or something. Normalize
| this, please.
|
| The perverse incentives people will defend so that they
| can obey the letter (but not the spirit) of the law are
| downright bizarre. You're all getting everything you
| deserve, too bad I'm getting it with you.
| rayiner wrote:
| > So if it decides to spend $X on something specific, it
| has to be spent on whatever that something is. The
| President doesn't have discretion in that case.
|
| But the Congress never did that. You won't find an
| appropriations bill where Congress allocated $X to Harvard
| and $Y to Princeton, etc. In fact, it did the opposite.
| Under Title VI, it empowered the executive branch to
| withhold money based on civil rights violations. And
| regardless of your view on Presidential power vis-a-vis
| executive branch agencies, 42 USC 2000d-1 specifically
| subordinates federal agencies' rules, regulations, and
| orders pursuant to Title VI to the authority of the
| "President."
| otterley wrote:
| We're in agreement here. That's why I mentioned in the
| first sentence that Congress can delegate certain
| spending decisions. But it's not the default behavior as
| the Constitution defaults to Congress having sole plenary
| authority.
| epistasis wrote:
| If a presidential candidate promises to break the law in his
| campaign, that does not give him the authority to break the
| law. We are a _constitutional republic_ and the constitution
| must be followed.
|
| It's quite clear that the current President does not give a
| damn about the constitution, know anything about it, or have
| any compunction about blatant violation of the constitution.
|
| > Otherwise, all authority in the executive branch
| effectively belongs to the president and random midlevel
| bureaucrats can only exercise it on his behalf.
|
| This is factually wrong.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > If a presidential candidate promises to break the law in
| his campaign, that does not give him the authority to break
| the law.
|
| The Supreme Court ruled otherwise.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Sort of. He would still be breaking the law, it's just
| that if it's an 'official act' then the judiciary can't
| do anything about it, just Congress via impeachment.
| dcrazy wrote:
| I think that opinion would have been less controversial
| if the President hadn't openly advertised his intent to
| violate the law repeatedly. It's not like the courts are
| rendered powerless if the President violates the law; any
| judgments they render are still binding on the parties,
| even if they require the parties act in ways contrary to
| the executive's interpretation of the law. That still
| means something as long people continue to respect the
| judiciary. The dangerous game we're playing is finding
| out whether that respect will continue.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| It also would have been much less controversial that,
| when asked, the Trump lawyer during oral arguments
| specifically dodged the question if the president can
| deploy Seal Team 6 to kill a political opponent. That
| choice is very telling as to what the next steps probably
| are, and none of them are good for this country.
| otterley wrote:
| That's not exactly what they held. They held that the
| President is immune from prosecution for official acts.
| Prosecutorial immunity doesn't mean his conduct is not
| unlawful; it means he can't be criminally prosecuted for
| it. That distinction is important because it doesn't
| prevent courts from issuing injunctions. And, as stated
| by others, the immunity is extended only to official
| acts. What constitutes an official act isn't super clear
| yet, but I think it's safe to assume that golfing isn't
| an official act.
| mmooss wrote:
| > We are a constitutional republic and the constitution
| must be followed.
|
| Also the law must be followed.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > The judicial branch has authority to stop him but they're
| only supposed to use it if they are convinced that what he's
| doing is unconstitutional.
|
| This is not true. They can also stop him if what he is doing
| is _illegal_. Statute can absolutely constrain the executive.
| boothby wrote:
| > Statute can absolutely constrain the executive.
|
| This is an open question. The judicial branch has
| authority, on paper. But without means of enforcing that
| authority, it cannot truly constrain the executive.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Congress has a jail. He's already refused to answer to a
| subpoena. They can arrest him any time they want.
| boothby wrote:
| Congress has a jail, sure. But I and the comment I was
| responding to were regarding the judiciary.
|
| To put a finer point on it: if the president orders
| somebody to do something in violation of federal law, and
| then pardons them, can the law be enforced?
| mmooss wrote:
| > This is an open question.
|
| It's not. Statute has constrained the executive for all
| of American history.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The judicial branch has authority to stop him but they're
| only supposed to use it if they are convinced that what he's
| doing is unconstitutional.
|
| That omits a crucial issue that many amazingly overlook: The
| bar isn't constitutional but legal. Congress makes the laws,
| not the President. The President is bound by those laws, and
| in fact their job is to enforce the laws that Congress makes.
| They cannot do things unless empowered by the law.
| deepsun wrote:
| > people didn't make a great choice
|
| Choices. Congress can overturn any president's order, but
| they do nothing.
| twic wrote:
| There are many other democracies, and most do not have this
| problem. Yours is just an exceptionally poorly-designed one.
| nine_k wrote:
| This is a fair question, but it's being asked a lot already.
|
| Let's imagine that completely legitimate circumstances lead to
| the US Government stopping the stream of grants to the Ivy
| League universities. How would they cope, given their enormous
| endowments that generate significant interest? This question is
| asked much less, and the answer is much less obvious. Hence the
| value of TFA.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| What's the point of such an abstract question? The
| university's goals and expected resolution for the problem
| would always depend critically on _why_ the stream of grants
| stopped.
| aoanevdus wrote:
| When a large institution is faced with uncertainty about
| the future, it's both feasible and prudent to make plans
| that account for multiple future outcomes. In this case, it
| makes sense to do both of the following:
|
| 1) Fight the administration in the legal system.
|
| 2) Plan for the case where some of those legal fights are
| lost.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| What does it mean, concretely, to plan for that case? It
| doesn't sound like there's any risk of a scenario where,
| like, Columbia can't pay maintenance staff and all the
| buildings flood. If the US government freezes them out of
| grant funding, then the research funded by those grants
| won't be funded any longer - there's no careful planning
| you can do to make that less true.
| xracy wrote:
| What is "a lot"? The question is pertinent.
|
| Additionally, the follow-on questions are irrelevant. There
| are a million better questions to ask on the other side of
| this as well, before we ask why someone can't live without
| the money that they've been acquiring entirely above board
| and legally. "Why does the gov't think it has the authority
| to do this?"
|
| Why do we need to have theoretical debates about legitimate
| circumstances, when there are real debates about illegitimate
| circumstances happening? having this irrelevant follow-on
| discussion is doing the gov't's work for them.
|
| In a different setting I can see asking this question, but
| there is no need to ask this question while the circumstances
| are clearly illegitimate.
| bitwize wrote:
| This question was not raised when the Obama administration
| dictated procedures and evidentiary standards to universities
| in cases of sexual assault, with threats of being found liable
| under Title IX for noncompliance. Well it was raised by some on
| the right, and then dismissed because, you know, the right, and
| who wants to defend campus rapists anyway? Those Duke
| University lacrosse kids should have hung -- even if they
| didn't actually rape that girl, they might have... or they
| might have raped some other girl.
|
| When Orange Man exercises a power he presumes to have, it's
| "dictatorial", but when "Pen and a Phone" Obama exercised that
| same power -- together with the people, follow where Obama
| leads.
| guelo wrote:
| But why are those on the right that objected to Obama not
| objecting to Trump?
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Because double standards.
| bitwize wrote:
| Because to them, the "right person" is doing it for the
| "right reasons". Same as the Obama supporters, really. It's
| like, do we live in a constitutional republic with
| consistent rules the government is expected to follow, or
| is it "for my friends, anything; for my enemies, the law"?
| freejazz wrote:
| One is complying with actual statutory law, the other is
| just ad hoc vengeance. You might not like it but one is
| an approach actually consistent with the constitutional
| order of power in this country and the other isn't. I'm
| so exhausted with this "tit for tat" bs. At best, it's a
| tacit admission that it is wrong and you don't care.
| dani__german wrote:
| Because the left never cared about the rules, except to
| circumvent them when in power and to use them as a way to
| prevent the other side from making meaningful progress when
| not.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Obama threatened, but did not make good on those threats.
| Trump is threatening and actively withholding funds even to
| Columbia which bent the knee, because these are institutions
| which are seen as political enemies by the administration.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| If the carrot is no different than the stick, then why
| chase carrots?
| mmooss wrote:
| This unlimited relativism is bizarre. If Trump invaded
| Canada, is his argument that Roosevelt invaded Germany? There
| is a difference between one and the other.
|
| What does the Duke lacrosse case have to do with it?
| dani__german wrote:
| To show that these questions have been asked before, and
| when the social issue at stake is one that leftists
| champion, very very few on the left are willing to stand up
| to presidential authority in any way.
|
| When the same exact power is used in a way that leftists by
| fiat deem "bad", there is no limit of the amount of
| pettiness, name calling, obstruction, and general ill will
| they will put to use to stop the president from doing
| something. in this case, it is to uphold Civil Rights law
| against a clear and ongoing violation.
|
| This poster should have realized though that the way to win
| in politics hasn't been "debating the left" or crying "what
| if the roles were reversed?!" for some time now. Thats the
| way to be a principled loser, and be called all sorts of
| names in the process.
| mmooss wrote:
| There is no comparable president on the left, or from any
| part of the political spectrum.
|
| > Thats the way to be a principled loser, and be called
| all sorts of names in the process.
|
| Your argument is baseless attacks and your victimhood. Is
| there anything substantive that supports your claims?
| eastbound wrote:
| Duke lacrosse what the epitome of "Guilty because male"...
| which made the wind turn around and you have a situation to
| deal with now. All of this because people don't want the
| left's "Guilty because male" or "because [race]" solution,
| and they made it known through the ballots.
|
| For those who don't know: Under Title IX, in summary,
| accusers of rape have all rights for their case to be
| treated by internal boards in the uni, which means no due
| trial with merits or proof, which is blatantly
| unconstitutional but the left didn't care at the time. Oh
| yeah and not only seizing the girl's phone as evidence is
| forbidden too, but even showing the man's phone with the
| conversation with the girl, because it would impede on the
| girl's privacy. So some poor Lacrosse players got accused,
| adulthoods were already ruined, the women admitted to
| lying, and this is the case with probably all accused
| without due process during the 2013-2025 period.
|
| And Title IX is still enforced.
| mmooss wrote:
| The sexual assault allegations against Duke lacrosse
| players were headed for criminal court. They are
| unresolved because powerful people prevented them and
| their alleged victim from having a day in court, evidence
| and arguments being heard from both sides, and a jury
| rendering a verdict. Instead their parents did everything
| possible to keep it out of court (why?).
| treis wrote:
| They aren't unresolved. They were dropped by the state.
| The initial prosecutor was disbarred and (briefly) went
| to jail for his misconduct.
| mmooss wrote:
| What you describe is that they are unresolved - there was
| no evidence, verdict. That was all suppressed, including
| by attacking the prosecutor. Why not clear their names in
| court?
|
| Prosecutors in every other circumstance wield almost
| unchecked power - except when the children of the
| powerful might end up in court. Name another prosecutor
| treated in this way.
| treis wrote:
| Name another one that has acted so egregiously.
| mmooss wrote:
| I don't know it was egregious; I think that was the media
| blitz by powerful people trying to shut them down.
|
| Regardless, it happens all the time everywhere -
| witholding evidence, fabricated evidence, forced
| confessions, black site torture, endless harassment, etc.
| etc. What this DA allegedly did was relatively nothing.
| freejazz wrote:
| So Trump can defy the constitutional order because of how
| Duke bungled a case of rape accusations? I don't follow
| that.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Why are you citing the these institutions' contribution to the
| 20th century? We are 25 years past the 20th century, 35 years
| since the end of the Cold War (which was the spiritual end of
| the 20th century).
|
| What have these elite institutions contributed to the 1990+
| world order?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Tons of research in the sciences, including medicine.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| So nothing that required them to maintain a one-sided,
| antagonistic political stance?
| _cs2017_ wrote:
| "Conveniently" is the wrong word to use here. "Conveniently
| ignores" implies that the author intentionally disregarded some
| known facts to make their argument look more persuasive.
| However, this is not the case here. The article's argument is
| that a reduction in government funding is very damaging even
| when it is small relative to the endowment size. This argument
| would not lose any of its power if the author covered the topic
| of whether the president has the power to withdraw funding.
|
| (On a side note, the word "framing" is also the wrong word to
| use.)
|
| One way to phrase your message correctly would be: "This
| article is about the impact of the president's decision, but I
| wish it also talked about whether the president has the
| authority to make that decision in the first place".
| xracy wrote:
| There's a reason that court cases typically address standing
| before addressing the underlying question. It matters much
| more _that_ you 're taking on a case before you determine the
| case on the merits. If the case doesn't have standing it is
| not worth considering.
|
| "Conveniently Ignoring" the standing question is frankly an
| admission of compliance to something that _is not the law_.
| Who cares "why people can't live without food" if someone is
| saying "let's starve the population." One question isn't
| worth platforming while the other is on the table.
| physPop wrote:
| This isn't law, its journalism, and frankly the article is
| well written and asks a good question -- why are these
| (extremely wealthy) universities finances so brittle?
| xracy wrote:
| It isn't law, but why does the _principle_ exist in law?
| That 's what I'm asking you to think about. Why would
| _judges_ who have to make decisions about people 's lives
| do this? Is there a good reason for it?
|
| Yes there is.
| dmurray wrote:
| The question is self-answering as soon as you read the
| first two sentences though.
|
| > Columbia...has an endowment of roughly $15bn. Mr
| Trump's administration withheld a mere $400m in federal
| funding.
|
| With the best investing in the world, that $15bn might
| throw off 1 billion a year in perpetuity. $400m (a year)
| is a very serious chunk of the university's budget.
| bloppe wrote:
| They're not ignoring it: https://www.economist.com/united-
| states/2025/04/03/donald-tr...
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| if you want to go that way, you're conveniently ignoring if
| congress should have the authority to allocate funds to
| nonprofits that aren't part of the government under the
| enumerated uses in article I section 8.
| freejazz wrote:
| In what way is what you raised a genuine question of
| constitutional law?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Certainly one could argue if evidence of widespread racism by
| specific institutions should face punishment by the executive.
| It is entirely reasonable to believe that we should turn the
| cheek to institutional racism so that we can get good research
| out of it.
| aag wrote:
| The Economist has articles on that subject already. They do
| their homework. Here's just one:
|
| https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/04/24/who-will-...
| xracy wrote:
| You don't go and decide a case on the merits when you've
| thrown it out on standing.
|
| Addressing the other question is a _pre-requisite_ to
| considering the one included in this piece. And given that
| they are ignoring the presumable answer to the other
| question, they have not justified the existence of this
| article.
| codexb wrote:
| At some level, _someone_ needs to have discretion on which
| grants to award and not award. You can call it "dictatorial",
| but I don't see how it's any less dictatorial if the decision-
| maker is some faceless, unaccountable bureaucrat vs a President
| that is accountable to voters. Surely, grants were being denied
| before for other reasons.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Do you honestly think Trump is individually reviewing grants?
|
| Trump with help of various groups makes political appointees
| who either individually oversee grant reviews or administrate
| individuals that do. These people are just as faceless and
| unaccountable as with any other president ...
|
| The difference here is that Congress who is much more
| accountable to voters deliberated and wrote laws authorizing
| various funding which is being completely overridden by the
| branch of government that is supposed to carry out the law.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| > At some level, someone needs to have discretion on which
| grants to award and not award
|
| Then that person should not be a politician or political
| appointee who judges on the merits and not on the votes it
| will bring.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| If the funds are disbursed from the public Treasury, it is
| very much a political decision. You can put some
| intermediary bureaucrats to create a face of objectivity,
| but it's a political decision at it's core.
| freejazz wrote:
| Do you understand that Congress has the power of the
| purse and the President does not?
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Snark aside, Yes I do. Congress if fully capable of being
| specific when it wants to and delegating to the executive
| when it doesn't. For example they required the A10
| airplane to continue to operate. They didn't specify the
| caliber of bullets to use.
| codexb wrote:
| Ah, the so-called benevolent dictator. The magical
| philosopher king to deliver us all from tyranny.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Surely, grants were being denied before for other reasons.
|
| Were they being denied? It might well be the case that grants
| were never denied except when the grant spigot ran dry
| waiting for the next year. I don't necessarily believe that
| is the case, but is there some evidence that it _doesn 't_
| work like that?
| wahern wrote:
| Process matters, everything else is to a first approximation
| merely platitudes. What's the difference between faceless
| bureaucrats making these decisions vs the president? It's the
| difference between rule of law vs dictatorship. Faceless
| bureaucrats have to follow policy defined by Congress and the
| President. If the person making the policy is the same person
| making the decision, and especially when the "policy" is
| whatever their fancy is, that's not rule of law. America was
| founded on the principle, "a government of law, not of men".
|
| Moreover, faceless bureaucrats risk criminal and financial
| punishments for things like self-dealing. The president faces
| no such risk. And when they're a lame duck, they
| (theoretically) face zero risk, period.
|
| Bureaucracies are slow. They're costly. Like democracy
| generally, they're inefficient. They're worthwhile because,
| at least as far as government is concerned, they're a
| necessary element to maintain rule of law and avoiding
| dictatorship. The solution to government bureaucracy isn't to
| remove the bureaucracy, it's to remove the government
| involvement. Otherwise, you're just inviting dictatorship.
| This has happened countless times. When the people get upset
| about perceived government ineffectiveness _and_ its
| democratic institutions are too slow to respond (e.g.
| gridlocked Congress), there are two routes: privatization
| (i.e. reducing the role of government, not merely something
| like syndicalism) or dictatorship.
|
| What's the difference between Donald Trump's rise to power
| and approach to governance, versus Huge Chavez's? Not much.
| The parallels are amazing. Both came to power promising
| radical overhauls of perceived sclerotic institutions,
| including broken legislatures. Like Trump, Chavez was a media
| whore who spent most of his time talking on television,
| making impossible promises and blaming everyone and
| everything else for his own failures. (Castro was like this,
| too.) They both spout so much B.S. that most people can't
| even keep up; they just start taking them at their word,
| which is why Chavez was popular until the day he died. His
| successor has zero charisma; the policies haven't changed,
| but now people hate the exact same kind of government they
| had during Chavez, but have no power to change it. That's
| what happens when you choose government of men rather than
| government of law.
| freejazz wrote:
| It is dictatorial, not because _one person_ gets to make the
| decision, but because the US constitution delineates the
| powers of the gov 't, to which the President does not have
| this power. I really do not understand why this is such a
| hard concept for many people here to grasp. The separation of
| powers is such a fundamental aspect of our government that I
| am astounded to see you miss this point. When any one branch
| usurps the power of another branch it is the *EXACT* kind of
| tyranny the constitution was created to avoid.
| codexb wrote:
| What was happening before this year? Surely, congress was
| not the one approving and awarding these grants. It was a
| member of the executive agency. Trump didn't declare any
| power that wasn't already being exercised by the executive.
| rayiner wrote:
| The word "dictatorial" doesn't apply here. What we're talking
| about is _government funding_ being provided to _private
| universities._ And Congress hasn 't appropriated specific
| amounts of money to specific universities. It has created a
| pool of funds and given the executive branch discretion to
| allocate those funds. The powers of the executive branch are
| invested in the president. See Article II, Section 1 ("The
| executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United
| States of America.").
|
| Congress, moreover, has enacted laws that use those funds as a
| hook to influence the behavior of private universities.
| Specifically, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allows
| the executive branch to deny federal funds to universities that
| discriminate on the basis of race. Now, it just so happens
| that, in 2023, Harvard university, among others, was found by
| the Supreme Court to have flagrantly violated that law:
| https://www.ed.gov/media/document/dear-colleague-letter-sffa...
|
| There is nothing "dictatorial" about the President withholding
| taxpayer dollars from a university that is in violation of the
| law, where Congress has authorized the executive branch to do
| so. Indeed, I'm at a loss to understand _who else_ you think
| has the power to do this, if not the President?
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| I'm guessing that what GP meant with "dictatorial" was along
| the lines of the power you describe being wielded in a
| specific manner.
|
| To put it differently: a state of affairs where the
| Executive/President has those powers may not be dictatorial,
| but this specific instance of him making use of that
| discretion in this specific way might be.
| otterley wrote:
| > There is nothing "dictatorial" about the President
| withholding taxpayer dollars from a university that is in
| violation of the law
|
| Hey now, wait a minute. Has the "violation of law" been
| established yet? There's a pretty wide gulf between "I
| believe a violation of the law has occurred" and having the
| matter adjudicated.
|
| You're clearly an intelligent person; there's no need to try
| to sneak bullshit in through the back door. Let the strength
| of your arguments and facts speak for themselves. And make
| sure they are actual facts.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Has the "violation of law" been established yet? There's
| a pretty wide gulf between "I believe a violation of the
| law has occurred" and having the matter adjudicated.
|
| Didn't _SFFA_ clearly establish that? The Supreme Court
| outright reversed the bench trial ruling, which had found
| that Harvard and UNC 's programs comported with Title VI
| and the Equal Protection Clause.
|
| You have a point that I should've said "was found to have
| violated" rather than "is in violation." Whether Harvard is
| still violating the law is debatable. But I'm not sure
| Title VI withholding can't be predicated on a recent
| violation.
|
| Regardless, as you know, the government routinely uses the
| threat of legal action for suspected violations to coerce
| compliance. Virtually every FDA/SEC/CFTC/etc. enforcement
| action starts with a letter along the lines of: "you're in
| violation of the law, do X, Y, and Z, or else we'll take
| action."
| otterley wrote:
| It's not reasonable to characterize _SFFA_ as a finding
| of wrongdoing on Harvard's part.
|
| At the time, universities were adhering to existing law (
| _Bakke_ and _Grutter_ cases). The Court then overturned
| its own precedent and decided that what was once
| acceptable under its own law was no longer so. The text
| of the Equal Protection clause didn't change; the only
| thing that changed was the Court's interpretation of it.
|
| So it's not like Harvard was operating in bad faith or
| being malicious, which is the characterization suggested
| by your "violation" language. (Not to mention that
| _every_ university in America that considered race in
| their admissions process, despite not being a named party
| to the suit, was similarly situated--probably most
| universities in the country.) And there's no evidence to
| suggest that Harvard didn't respond appropriately and in
| a timely fashion to the new law.
| foxglacier wrote:
| It seems like Harvard and those other universities might
| have been pushing the boundaries. Was the discrimination
| required or just allowed? The court for Grutter seemed to
| say it was "required" and for Bakke a "compelling state
| interest", but I might not understand the meaning of that
| properly. There are universities that don't discriminate
| (UC?) and they somehow get away with it. If you were
| running Harvard and trying your best to comply with the
| law, would you feel it's legally safer to discriminate or
| to not discriminate? The answer to that points to whether
| they were operating in bad faith or not.
|
| Title VI seems to clearly say "don't discriminate" but
| again I might not understand how exceptions are allowed.
| otterley wrote:
| It's important to understand the context in which these
| laws and Constitutional amendments were written. They
| were designed and enacted after the Civil War (in the
| case of the Fourteenth Amendment) and the 1960s (Civil
| Rights Act, once we determined the Fourteenth Amendment
| was insufficient) to prevent Black people from being
| discriminated against. At the time, nobody, including the
| authors, considered these laws to be a shield to protect
| white and Asian people from discrimination. (At that
| time, there were hardly any Asians in the US anyway.)
|
| So, from the 1960s until recently, the Court allowed
| universities to consider race in university admissions
| because it advanced a public policy that sought to
| improve the lot of Black people: the more Blacks could
| enter the ranks of the educated elite, the better off
| they would be in the long run, both socially and
| economically.
|
| Over time, though, people whose admissions were rejected
| started to fight back: they felt that academic merit
| trumped all other considerations. After all, if they got
| better grades and aptitude test scores, weren't they more
| deserving of admission? The fights began, and over time,
| the Court chipped away at the acceptable use of race in
| admissions. Finally, in _SFAA_ , the Court did away with
| them altogether.
|
| As far as "pushing the boundaries" is concerned, actors
| will generally try to do whatever's in their best
| interest provided it's not illegal. There's no reward for
| maintaining a wide margin from legal boundaries when
| there's competition.
| foxglacier wrote:
| Is that how the law works? Because the Civil Rights Act
| was written with black people in mind, it only applies to
| black people even though the wording doesn't specify
| that? Surely it's quite an obvious omission that they
| would have written down if that's what they'd wanted. Is
| it a kind of trick law written to make people think other
| races are protected but due to how laws are interpreted,
| it was always known not to apply to them?
| otterley wrote:
| It is an unfortunate defect of our legal system that
| legislation is not always as explicit as we would like it
| to be. Take California's Penal Code 187(a) which defines
| murder as:
|
| "(a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or
| a fetus, with malice aforethought."
|
| It turns out that "malice aforethought" is a term of art
| that requires no actual malice and not much forethought.
|
| Anyway, if you look at the legislative history of the
| Civil Rights Act (and courts frequently look to
| legislative history when interpreting statutes), you'll
| see that its backers in Congress were concerned about
| racial segregation, which at the time according to
| practice separated white people from everyone else
| (mostly Blacks).
| rayiner wrote:
| > It's not reasonable to characterize SFFA as a finding
| of wrongdoing on Harvard's part
|
| As I understand it, that's the legal effect of _SFFA_.
| SFFA sued Harvard seeking, among other things, a
| declaratory judgment that Harvard's admissions policies
| violate Title VI. The district court ruled, after bench
| trial, that Harvard didn't violate Title VI. The Supreme
| Court didn't remand for further proceedings, it outright
| reversed. Meaning that it found that Harvard's procedures
| _did violate_ Title VI.
|
| Bad faith or malice aren't elements of a Title VI
| violation. And I don't see any legal reason why an
| administration couldn't hold Harvard's discrimination
| against students--which happened, even if the Supreme
| Court changed its mind about whether it was permissible--
| against Harvard in allocating federal funding.
|
| Moreover, Harvard's defiant response to _SFFA_ provides a
| reasonable basis for the administration to believe it has
| continued to engage in discrimination:
| https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/06/harvard-
| unite...
|
| Of course, now that Harvard has decided to fight it, the
| administration will have to prove its belief:
| https://www.axios.com/2025/04/28/harvard-law-review-
| trump-ad.... That's how these enforcement letters always
| pan out. Many targets fold to avoid litigation.
| Sometimes, a defendant fights it and the government has
| to initiate a formal enforcement action.
|
| The DOJ, FDA, FTC, and SEC do stuff like this all the
| time. These agencies all lean very heavily on the threat
| of an enforcement action to enforce changes in private
| behavior without having to actually take entities to
| court.
| otterley wrote:
| > I don't see any legal reason why an administration
| couldn't hold Harvard's discrimination against students--
| which happened, even if the Supreme Court changed its
| mind about whether it was permissible--against Harvard in
| allocating federal funding.
|
| That would actually be an interesting case. I find it
| difficult to believe that the Court would allow such an
| _ex post facto_ application. The problem with this is
| that _anyone_ who engaged in behavior that was lawful at
| the time, then subsequently deemed unlawful, could be
| subject to abrogation of benefits or other penalties.
| That said, in light of how the Court 's makeup has
| changed in the past 20 years, I suppose I shouldn't be
| surprised if I turn out to be wrong.
|
| > Harvard's defiant response to SFFA provides a
| reasonable basis for the administration to believe it has
| continued to engage in discrimination
|
| I don't think it does. I think Harvard is saying "we will
| continue to lawfully promote diversity however we can."
| There's nothing unlawful action being described or
| advocated in its response. Costco and Disney, BTW, do the
| same.
|
| > Moreover, Harvard's defiant response to SFFA provides a
| reasonable basis for the administration to believe it has
| continued to engage in discrimination
|
| You're mixing up two different plot lines. We're
| discussing NSF and other Federal grant withdrawal
| resulting from Harvard's failure to implement
| discretionary measures Trump wants them to take relating
| to hiring, policy, and curriculum. This other story is
| about investigating Harvard Law Review. It seems pretty
| obvious that Trump is trying to find any angle he can to
| prevail in his fight against the institution.
| themgt wrote:
| A few other commenters have alluded to it, but Obama's 2011
| (and then 2014/2016) "Dear Colleague" letters are critical to
| understanding what's going on here. As FIRE tells it:
|
| _In April 2011, the United States Department of Education's
| Office for Civil Rights (OCR) established new mandates
| requiring colleges and universities receiving federal funding
| to dramatically reduce students' due process rights. Under the
| new regulations, announced in a letter from Assistant Secretary
| for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali, colleges and universities were
| required to employ a "preponderance of the evidence" standard--
| a 50.01%, "more likely than not" evidentiary burden--when
| adjudicating student complaints concerning sexual harassment or
| sexual violence. The regulations further required that if a
| university judicial process allows the accused student to
| appeal a verdict, it must allow the accusing student the right
| to appeal as well, resulting in a type of "double jeopardy" for
| the accused. Additionally, OCR's letter failed to recognize
| that truly harassing conduct (as defined by the law) is
| distinct from protected speech. Institutions that did not
| comply with OCR's new regulations faced federal investigation
| and a potential loss of federal funding._
|
| The innovation in these letters was realizing OCR could just
| come to a new understanding of what civil rights law required,
| then tell universities that since this is what civil rights law
| means, following the guidance would be a mandate for
| institutions to receive federal funding. So now Trump's come in
| and reinterpreted civil rights law once again.
|
| At this point probably a supermajority of the country thinks
| this innovative idea for enacting ad-hoc nationwide policy
| changes has been abused by one or more administrations, but I
| haven't heard anyone seriously working on a generalized
| solution. Everyone's mostly given up on Congress and just hopes
| their team can take control of the magic pen.
|
| https://www.thefire.org/cases/us-department-educations-offic...
| eric-p7 wrote:
| From the HN guidelines:
|
| "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or
| celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new
| phenomenon." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| xnx wrote:
| I keep seeing this presented as if the money were being given
| away, but isn't it more accurate to describe it as payment for
| services (e.g. access to research facilities)?
| linguistbreaker wrote:
| The POTUS should not have this authority obviously, BUT
|
| As "Ivies" grew their endowments at hundreds of percent faster
| than their student bodies, they became essentially hedge funds
| that do some education.
| primer42 wrote:
| As I understand it, billionaires take out loans with their
| stock/investments as collateral to get cash without selling said
| assets.
|
| Why can't universities do the same? Or is my understanding of
| billionaire money shenanigans incorrect?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Universities can and they do:
|
| https://public.com/bonds/screener?issuerSymbol=PDFHV
|
| The yield on ~20 year Harvard bonds seems to be about one
| percentage point higher than the yield on 20 year treasuries.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| Those are standard, unsecured bonds. They're not loans
| against anything in the endowment.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Right, and the endowment already uses leverage, so many of
| the endowment's assets will already serve as security for
| loans.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| Sure, but that's margin trading. These bonds have nothing
| to do with the endowment.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Yeah, sorry I didn't make it clear enough that I was
| agreeing with you. The endowment's assets are likely
| mostly/all pledged as security for margin trading, in
| which case there may be few/no assets left which could
| serve as collateral for borrowing that will fund payouts.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Or just use the endowment directly. Quick napkin math says that
| Harvard could make tuition free for all undergrads for 26 years
| with what they current have. Originally this money was meant to
| be spent on education but they just let it grow forever. Some
| of their hedge fund managers are approaching 8-figure annual
| compensation packages and I can't help but assume this is part
| of what has corrupted the university. Citadel LLC has $65
| billion AUM, while Harvard has $53 billion while getting
| special tax-exemptions.
| daft_pink wrote:
| I feel things like Universities and Hospitals are some of the
| most questionable non-profits in existence.
|
| They operate and appear as for profits businesses to most people.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| There are no owners (shareholders) getting dividends, is the
| major difference.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| It is part of the political reality that we live in. Whichever
| party is currently in power, will inevitably use that power to
| promote ideas that are favorable to them and to dissuade ideas
| that they are opposed to.
|
| The same people who are whining about the Trump administration
| abusing their power by doing these things; were cheering on the
| Biden administration for doing similar things from the opposite
| angle.
|
| This is why we have to be very careful when crafting laws. Before
| passing it because we want our party to use it to help us, we
| have to imagine what would happen when the opposing party tries
| to use this law against us.
| gryfft wrote:
| > cheering on the Biden administration for doing similar things
| from the opposite angle
|
| What is the #1 thing you consider "a similar thing from an
| opposite angle?"
| lordfrito wrote:
| Biden's multiple student loan forgivness attempts come to
| mind? He might have been handing out money, as opposed to
| taking it away like Trump. But the underlying issues are the
| same: he did it unilaterally using executive order, and the
| courts had to get involved because there were concerns about
| constitutionality.
|
| If the executive branch has the authority to determine where
| money is spent, then it seems obvious to me that it also has
| the authority to determine where it isn't spent. If you think
| of the president as an executive "CEO", then the current CEO
| can change the decisions of the previous CEO... This is in
| fact what we're voting for in the presidential election --
| "how" to run the daily business of country. New CEO, new
| goals, new policies, etc.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| The complete disregard for our immigration laws was probably
| the biggest thing, even though there were a number of things
| that came close.
|
| Millions were let across our borders with almost no vetting
| whatsoever. Criminals came in freely from all over the world
| bringing drugs, violence, and human trafficking with them.
|
| The Biden administration acted more like a travel agent than
| a border enforcement force. Anyone who spoke up about it, was
| attacked.
|
| Something more closely related to Trump's current actions
| against universities, was Biden's war on energy. Pipelines
| canceled. Lands and leases locked up. Taxes and regulations
| designed to reduce energy production.
| p_j_w wrote:
| > Millions were let across our borders with almost no
| vetting whatsoever. Criminals came in freely from all over
| the world bringing drugs, violence, and human trafficking
| with them. The Biden administration acted more like a
| travel agent than a border enforcement force. Anyone who
| spoke up about it, was attacked.
|
| > Millions were let across our borders with almost no
| vetting whatsoever. Criminals came in freely from all over
| the world bringing drugs, violence, and human trafficking
| with them. The Biden administration acted more like a
| travel agent than a border enforcement force. Anyone who
| spoke up about it, was attacked.
|
| Asserted without evidence, dismissed without evidence.
| lief79 wrote:
| The last part is accurate, but equating the two is a bit of
| stretch. The democrats went out their way to do everything by
| the book. They also generally took the time to understand the
| systems they were working with.
|
| The current presidency went in with the assumption that
| everything was wasteful, and didn't take the time to understand
| what they were cutting. Hence, emergency rehires, judicial
| blocks on firing, etc.
|
| The amount of noise about it was the same, but the root causes
| and support are far from equivical.
| nickff wrote:
| Biden had the bureaucracy on his side (it's well known that
| government employees are largely left-Democrats), so he was
| able to collaborate with it. In his first term, Trump learned
| that insiders were good at preventing him from accomplishing
| his goals when he 'played by the rules', so now he's just
| ignored 'the system'.
|
| Insiders have plainly ignored the law in the past when it was
| convenient, (see all the agencies which violated notice-and-
| comment rule-making in the Obama years,) we've just never
| seen anyone ignore the administrative agencies to this degree
| before.
| gs17 wrote:
| I'm not aware of mass cancelling of research grants under Biden
| in the same way Trump is doing. The Trump to Biden transition
| took place during my PhD, and I never heard a peep about
| anything similar. Now all I hear about is cancelled grants.
|
| Under Biden, many grants _did_ have to appeal to liberal
| sensibilities to be selected, but he didn 't order all grants
| that didn't focus on DEI cancelled in 2021. I'm not even sure
| if "inclusion" was added to the NSF's list of "broader impacts"
| under Biden or well before him.
| mmooss wrote:
| > the political reality that we live in
|
| Reality is something that exists regardless of what you think.
| Politics is what you make it; you don't 'live in it'; it's
| yours.
|
| > Whichever party is currently in power, will inevitably use
| that power to promote ideas that are favorable to them and to
| dissuade ideas that they are opposed to.
|
| No prior president of either party has done anything like what
| Trump does, and you know it. Do you think nobody will notice if
| you make some rhetorical argument?
| didgetmaster wrote:
| No prior president did anything like Biden did either. Only
| hyper-partisans will claim that only one side does radical
| things.
| strangeloops85 wrote:
| Public schools in the US get a relatively small fraction of their
| budget from state funding. The distinction between public and
| private is not as large or substantial as one might imagine.
|
| For example the 10-campus UC system's total budget is $54 billion
| of which $4.6 billion comes directly from the state's general
| fund. https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4998 - the federal
| funding here is the same as for private universities, to do
| research or other work in the form of contracts/ grants.
| jmyeet wrote:
| People need to understand how the pharmacology pipeline works.
|
| The Federal government provides funds for research. That research
| finds novel compounds and new treatments. The product of that
| resaerch then gets transferred to private companies who
| commercialize it and then make massive profits from it.
|
| Generally speaking, drug companies don't research with one
| exception: patent extension. A given compound will be patented
| and then the patent owner will have a monopoly over that for a
| number of years, supposedly because there'd be no investment
| otherwise, but that patent will ultimately expire. Except... it
| doesn't really. It's why over a century later we're still dealing
| with insulin patents. "Patent extension" is the process where you
| make a small change to a molecule or a delivery system and then
| get a new patent, refusing to sell the old. And it can be hard
| for someone else to produce a generic for many reasons.
|
| Now I have a lot of problems with this system:
|
| 1. Any form of patent extension should be illegal, basically;
|
| 2. The institutions who actually come up with this should share
| in the profits. After all, it's the government paying for it;
|
| 3. We give a monopoly to these companies in the US where it's
| illegal to import the exact same product from overseas, which
| leads to something costing $800 in the US and $5 in France.
|
| But given this is the system we're stuck with, cutting off
| funding makes absolutely no sense. Why?
|
| 1. It's going to dramatically impact drug companies negatively in
| the future as their supply of new products dries up;
|
| 2. It's antoerh element of soft power where the US can use the
| power to produce certain medicines to influence other countries.
| Think about what happens if China becomes the source for the
| world's medicines (personally, i'd be a fan but the purveyors of
| this policy most definitely are not).
|
| Government research has given us things like the Internet and
| mRNA vaccines. This is so unbelievably shortsighted.
|
| And why are they doing it? Well, the party of Free Speech is
| punishing institutions because some of their students made
| factually correct but mean statements about Israel.
| dekhn wrote:
| pharma does plenty of research outside of patent extension.
| boplicity wrote:
| To be clear: It's not as simple as funding for these schools
| being taken away.
|
| What's being threatened is funding for _research_ being done at
| these schools. That 's a huge difference.
| aianus wrote:
| Does the admin of the school get any of this money today or is
| it entirely allocated to the individual researchers?
| 2cynykyl wrote:
| Yes, about half is skimmed off the top by the university,
| called 'overhead'. This is used to fund everything, from
| research-essential things like paying for heat and
| maintaining buildings, to less obvious but still research-
| essential things like IP lawyers to deal with contracts and
| campus security. However, SOME of the overhead will end up
| supporting things that are 'contentious' like DEI enforcement
| or whatever.
| arduanika wrote:
| It's not as simple as that, either. Every research grant comes
| with an "overhead" charge on top that goes to the university
| admin, which can be something like 60%.
|
| https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/02/10/lies-damn-lies-and-un...
|
| And moreover, it's not just the research grants that are being
| threatened, as seen in TFA. There's also the massive subsidy in
| the form of tax exemption. No other hedge funds receive that
| kind of preferred tax treatment. Only universities.
| boplicity wrote:
| So I have a rare disease. The only treatment is surgery.
| However, there is an ongoing study on a promising treatment
| at an elite university for a very effective and simple drug-
| based treatment. That type of research funding is
| _absolutely_ being threatened. So, yes, it really is that
| simple.
|
| If only Trump were trying to force universities to be more
| efficient with their spending. However, both of us clearly
| know that is not what is going on here.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Gottingen and Berlin were arguably the best universities in the
| world in 1930.
|
| They were not in 1940.
| ssalazar wrote:
| This author presumably understands but buries the lede that for
| an endowment of $15 billion a university would typically only
| spend 5%, or $750 million, annually. So "a mere $400m" is over
| half of the annual funds from the endowment (not including
| tuition income and donations) that might be available to a
| university with such an endowment.
|
| It should be relatively obvious that spending into the principal
| of an endowment is not a sustainable practice over the long-term
| for universities that are operating at the scale of centuries.
| kccqzy wrote:
| At a scale of centuries, monetary units themselves become
| highly unstable. On this time scale it was recently that people
| thought deflation was good for the economy, and that spending
| 5% every year would be reckless.
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