Dems grappling w/ Biden’s pardoning of his son for federal crimes after they spent yrs slamming Trump as a threat to democracy who disregarded the law

[Here_4_a_Day]

Are you really a school teacher?

Doubtful. One would have to think some child's father would have broken his neck by now.....

 

[Aardvark86]

If you’re going to mock them, at least spell it right. It’s academia.

Speaking of which...

...the other evening a neighbor English professor at W&L was passing by our house while I was putting up Xmas lights, and we chatted as I hadn't seen him for a while as he'd been away for a few weeks on a sabbatical research trip. While we didn't get too far down the political rabbit hole, he made a surprising (to me) comment along the lines of his grave concerns about Trump "trying to take away elite universities' money", noting among other things that they really don't have that much money "compared to Elon Musk".

Aside from the hilarity of the Musk comparison (who does?), it first struck me that he seems to be missing the point about what Trump and his supporters may want to "do" to elite universities, and the perceived "problem" with their money. From my perspective, Trump's focus on higher ed is likely more on social issues (eg, DEI) rather than "taking their money" (at least if "their money" means their endowments, which he seemed to be suggesting, rather than their federal grants). Second, I think the public's view of universities' "money" is actually less related to the social issues -- it's that they've generally become tax exempt ginormous investment trusts who are frequently more interested in spending on real estate empires than their core mission while sticker prices are set high to create artificial perceptions of value, with a smattering of money thrown at middle class or 'preferred' students. Third, it seemed to me to be a little 'tone deaf' given W&L's own situation. Their most recent 'investment' was in the local country club, which they now comprise the majority of the board, so that they can put millions into upgrading the golf course for D3 tourneys and, more importantly, for alumni fundraising events on several weekends a year. (Meanwhile, est cost of attendance per their website is 91k/year). And beyond that, they're not a research university, so I have a hard time believing much will be taken away from them (short of a substantial revision to tax exempt status for universities, which I'd wholeheartedly support). Unsurprisingly, while W&L obviously has some unique social issues given its history, it's quite literally played out in their alumni support as there is now a "shadow" alumni organization pulling in a couple million in donations a year and running parallel programming.

Ultimately, W&L will be fine, with a $1.9B endowment (top 15 on a per student basis). Maybe, as a SLAC, even better than Harvard, Penn, and others whose revenues are, I suspect, much more tied to federal research. But boy, the myopia...