[dmurray]

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.

[ryandrake]

Exactly... Scaling the numbers down: It's as if a person has $1.5M net worth, and their investments produce $100K per year. They are also simply being handed $40K per year from someone they disagree with, but who otherwise reliably provides that income. Are they just going to turn that money down because of this ethical disagreement? A lot of people wouldn't.

[nkurz]

Or alternatively, their investments from one account produce $100K per year, their investments from another account (non-Federal grants) produce an unknown amount, and they have a job (tuition payments) that produces another unknown amount. How significant is 40% of the 100K?

We don't know unless we fill in the unknown numbers. Knowing that the amount of federal aid being removed is 40% of an estimate of the amount produced by one source (the endowment) isn't enough information to answer the question. The right question is what percentage of their budget this represents.

From what I can tell, Harvard's actual annual budget is about $6.5B (https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/10/financial-report-fis...). A $400M shortfall is thus about 6% of their annual budget. Significant, but also something they could probably cover for the next decade or two by drawing down their endowment until they adjust.