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The entire purpose of an endowment is to help a university weather lean years without gutting its core academic programs. Yet Harvard has chosen to protect its gold pile over its scholarship, famously behaving like a hedge fund with a school attached as an afterthought. As CFO Ritu Kalra put it, the endowment is “not a source of short-term relief but a covenant across generations.” Translated from administrative jargon, that means the priority is not education but to have as big a stream of income as possible that is shielded from the influence of donors, students, and government.

And

And right on cue, the university’s collapse into financialized pseudo-education is now being met with a political response that’s just as absurd. Two weeks ago, President Trump announced that Harvard had reached a tentative deal with his administration to restore $2.4 billion in frozen federal grants — on the condition that it spend $500 million to create a network of trade schools for mechanics to work on ‘‘automotive plant, motors, engines,’’ which doesn’t really make any sense to me, but okay. I mean, I think funding trade schools in general is a good idea, but I am not sure that forcing Harvard to run one at gunpoint makes sense.

Sounds like the US is trying to create a core of machinists and hands-on engineers to play catch up with Chinese manufacturing

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The programs could be really cool if they focus on robotics and other high end manufacturing

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deleted by author

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I forget what the term is but Harvard’s value is in being a known networking place for important people.

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Finishing school?

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No, I think there's a word for places that are used as a coordination device from experimental econ.

I remember reading about some sort of contests where people were dropped in random locations in a city and challenged with finding each other within a day. People are really good at this apparently, because we end up going to the most well known place in the city and waiting for the other person to show up.

Harvard's sort of like that for the elites.

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Schelling point?

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Top marks

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When and Where can I meet you in NYC?

Noon at Grand Central Station

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2.4 BILLION dude? Jesus

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Harvard runs as per its owners' interests, what's wrong with that?

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Thanks Spider-Man!

The Desalination Monopoly (or: Who Gets to Turn the Tap)

A desalination plant feeds the fleet that funds its pipes. The valves open for their ships—their cargo, their thirst, their custom-blend freshwater. What’s the scandal? None—unless you thought the plant was public utility, not a private spigot!

Ownership doesn’t always poison the water; it just decides who drinks . As a consequence, an issue isn’t that Harvard, Bitcoin, School, Money, Marriage, sweet lust or reason is becoming quenched—it’s that the lighthouse still flashes “ALL WELCOME" while the hose stays coiled for the rest.

The sea’s not corrupt. The faucet’s just labeled wrong.

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Harvard is a private institution, who said it is public?

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