[dangus]

These are top schools with huge endowment funds that act as investment vehicles.

Many of them could theoretically operate indefinitely without ever charging tuition, if the funds were hypothetically allowed to be used in that way.

Someone did some napkin math on this for Harvard on Quora: https://qr.ae/pvAQ7v

Now, this person didn't do a great job accounting for inflation, but I do think a professionally managed endowment can get much better than a 3% return on its investments to cover inflation.

Harvard's endowment is pretty close to the same size as Stanford.

It's really just the small, less prestigious universities that have financial issues [1]. The Stanfords and Harvards of the world don't need any help.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/27/more-colleges-face-bankruptc...

[deltree7]

"This person didn't do a great job of accounting for inflation"

Listen to yourself. This is like saying "we have a perfect earthquake prediction model, except it doesn't predict certain types of earthquakes"

This comment along with the massive down-votes that my posts have received proves that a majority of HN is absolutely clueless about running businesses and I'm glad for that

[dangus]

While the person doing the napkin math didn't account for inflation, they were also wildly conservative in terms of how much of a return endowments can get from their investments, mostly just referencing the 4% rule that's useful for retiring individuals with very low risk tolerance.

They estimated that free tuition for all students would cost 3% per year, but the S&P 500 has returned over 10% yearly over the last 100 years, 7% adjusted for inflation. [1]

This math also assumes that the school never receives another donation ever again, which is quite unlikely.

It should also be obvious that my point isn't that schools should literally run entirely on their endowment. My point is: giving money to a school like Harvard or Stanford isn't really an act of charity at this point, because they are juggernaut institutions that are too big to fail. They don't need to be raking in licensing fees from images and quotes from people who have been dead for decades.

It's also interesting that, in your last sentence, you are implying that HN viewers don't know anything about running a business, but last I checked we were talking about universities. There's a little bit of irony here: my whole argument revolves around the fact that these supposedly "non-profit" educational institutions are acting very much like businesses in ways probably shouldn't be.

In my view, images and text for deceased historical figures like Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King, Jr. should be part of the public domain much sooner than copyright law currently allows so that we can all enjoy and learn from their legacy freely without capitalist incentives.

I think Reddit is a better place to complain about fake Internet points. I highly recommend it!

[1] https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1926

[deltree7]

Stanford releases most of their courses for free for the world to consume and improve their knowledge and help humanity.

It is not about internet points, but the fact that how anti-capitalists the intellectual elites have become despite massively benefiting from it and the single biggest factor that has driven down poverty on a global scale.

No one read the article. It was beautiful well-written. Instead HN, like reddit went all pitch-fork "Hurr Durr, Bad Capitalists"

[dangus]

The name-calling ("anti-capitalists," "intellectual elites") seems like an attempt to discredit the healthy practice of investigating or criticizing potentially corrupt practices within our institutions.

Anyone who dares question the status-quo is an "anti-capitalist," a snobby "intellectual elite," or is a very stupid member of a dangerous mob, "hur dur.”

An institution being a net-positive and the institution needing reform and oversight are not mutually exclusive concepts.

I most certainly read the article, and I still don't understand why anyone's allowed to own exclusive rights to profit off of someone who has been dead as long as Albert Einstein. I can’t think of anyone who would benefit from that system besides the rights-holders.

I'll see you over at https://einstein.biz, maybe I'll buy you a t-shirt or a mug.