In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I ran across two articles yesterday, both at Real Clear Politics, that get the elite university problem either competely wrong, or they miss a whole lot. The first is at Semafor, Universities’ nightmare scenario: it’s not just federal funding cuts . Its premise: The nightmare scenario for elite universities is here. The flood of White House actions aimed at private colleges can be hard to follow. But think of these universities as companies, and the math gets simpler — and the dangers become stark. Top universities are financial titans, generating investment profits that mirror those of Wall Street firms. . . . By revenue, UPenn is bigger than BNY Mellon; Columbia is as big as Coinbase. But these universities operate on profit margins thinner than those of a grocery store. In short, they make a lot of money but spend almost all of it. This obscures a basic problem: for tax purposes, a university can't make a profit, strictly defined. It can collect revenues greater t...