Trump is going after Harvard because Barron didn't get in

M.O.F.

Melania wanted Barron to attend college in NYC and NYU was chosen, and it was early. There was no mention he applied to Harvard or other Ivy League Universities. Getting rejected for admissions at very elite schools is no shame. I doubt he applied to Harvard.

Trump’s mean spirited motive to harass Harvard may have nothing to do with Barron.

Harvard University's endowment, valued at $53.2 billion as of June 30, 2024, is the largest academic endowment in the world

But Harvard isn't the only school that Trump has targeted and why under any circumstances should taxpayers' dollars go to an elite school where the tuition is $60K plus a year.

Harvard is the largest recipient of foreign investment among its Ivy-league peers receiving nearly $200 million more than the second highest recipient Cornell University from January 2020 to October 2024. - The Harvard Crimson

R3. Why on earth shouldn't an institution that is performing research that benefits all of us do it at its own expense? Harvard receives money for projects such as cancer research---projects in the public interest----not to build new buildings or to subsidize tuition of its students. And what is the relevance of the tuition amount to your argument?

Actually Trump is going after Harvard for several reasons but the Pritzkers is the major one.

Trump's first big real estate deal was with the Pritzker family creating the Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Station. Like most of Trump's deals, this one fell apart and became a supremely vicious and bitter legal battle. Trump has always hated the Pritzkers as much as he's hated anyone.

The chairman of the Harvard Board?

Penny Pritzker.

[Quote] And what is the relevance of the tuition amount to your argument?

Oh, I don't know R4 maybe it's because It's another source of money for Harvard in addition to their endowments and the millions of dollars they received from foreign governments. Obviously, you didn't go to Harvard if you couldn't figure that one out.

Harvard Paid Its Endowment Chief $6.2 Million, Ex-President Gay $1.4 Million in 2023

R6 Ummmmm. Of course, I posed that question to highlight your ignorance and stupidity. First of all, less than half of the Harvard class pays the full tuition. Most get financial aid from the endowment, which is funded by donations. Second, if you had given it a moment's thought you would realize that even if all students were paying that amount, the university would collect $420 million from its 7,000 undergraduates. Harvard's operating budget is $6.4 billion. Harvard is not rich because of the tuition it receives from students. It would be insolvent were it not for the generosity of its donors. It's nice that you know absolutely nothing and like to comment on public affairs, but you should really the decision-making to people who don't suffer from your ignorance and simplicity.

That poor kid. Does he have any friends?

[quote] There was no mention he applied to Harvard

Oh Please, like they would admit that? Especially if he got rejected? There is no evidence Barron even has good grades. Dumb kid dosent even know the difference between a briefcase and a SOOOOUUUUTcase.

R8 why are our tax dollars needed?

Each of Harvard's 12 schools owns its share of the endowment over 80% of the funds that make up the endowment are dedicated by the donor to a specific school.

In their quest for the next big drug discovery, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly teaming up with some of the nation’s top universities, recruiting campus scientists as partners and offering schools multimillion-dollar deals to work on experimental drugs in development. Marcia Angell, HMS senior lecturer on social medicine, is quoted. Research partnerships between Harvard and pharmaceutical companies are mentioned.

Harvard's endowments are made up of over 14,000 funds the 2 largest categories of funds support faculty and students including professorships and financial aid for undergraduates, graduate fellowships and student life and activities

Senior University leaders had privately warned for months about the lackluster philanthropy figures amid a tumultuous year marked by a leadership crisis and heightened public scrutiny over the University’s botched initial statement after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

r12 - that might be true, but Harvard received $1.2 million dollars from donors in ONE DAY after Trump first started picking on it. So Harvard's alumni, who include some of the wealthiest people in the US, decide to fight back, I think Trump might realize that he's awakened a sleeping giant. Many people in his administration are alumni, many judges, including Supreme Court Justices Roberts, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson, top management at many corporations. All looking at his actions with a jaundiced eye. He's hoping for a populist uprising against an "elitist" institution, but honestly, would you trust Oklahoma University to do all the varieties of scientific and medical research that Harvard does with the same level of students and professors?

Even with its mammoth endowment, Harvard says it has been funding nearly two-thirds of its operating expenses from other sources, including federal research grants and student tuition.

The university has seen a surge in donations following the administration’s funding freeze, with $1.14 million collected in under 48 hours, student newspaper The Harvard Crimson reported, citing a giving update by Harvard Alumni Affairs and Development, though the amount is far less than the funds that were pulled.

[Quote] Harvard received $1.2 million dollars from donors in ONE DAY after Trump first started picking on it.

That's a drop in the bucket, hon!

Harvard Paid Its Endowment Chief $6.2 Million, Ex-President Gay $1.4 Million in 2023

I grant you that, but a salary of 6.2 million dollars is "only" $17000/day. I'm guessing that Endowment chiefs earn their money. In some cases, endowments have far exceeded both the intake of donations and the broad performance of stock markets by large margins. Or another way of saying that is that if donations were to continue at that pace, they would pay that guy's salary in 5 days.

R15. One reason Harvard has a large endowment is that it is effectively managed. Compensation for effective fund managers is very high. I don’t think the compensation figures you present are very high when compared to the for-profit sector.

Apparently, you expect Harvard to hire a low-salary fund manager who isn’t employable elsewhere to mismanage its endowment.

[Quote] In some cases, endowments have far exceeded both the intake of donations and the broad performance of stock markets by large margins.

But that may not be practical or even possible R16

Tapping into the endowment may be impractical for several reasons, including that some of it is legally restricted, but also because some of the unrestricted money is tied up in illiquid assets, such as in hedge funds, private equity and real estate that can’t be easily sold.

“One of the hard things is everybody thinks ‘Harvard, they’re so rich it doesn’t matter.’ The fact is, Harvard is rich. It does put them in a better position to manage this situation, but they don’t have an indefinite amount of money, and not all of their funding is accessible,”

More than $2.2 billion in federal grants and contracts have been frozen and even more could be siphoned away if the other pressures materialize. Harvard Medical School is preparing for possible layoffs and the School of Public Health, which received three stop-work orders on research this week, is winding down two leases in off-campus buildings.

Trump is amazing. He's getting money from rednecks, Jews and Arabs- all at the same time.

[Quote]Apparently, you expect Harvard to hire a low-salary fund manager who isn’t employable elsewhere to mismanage its endowment.

No R17 of course not silly but apparently, they need a miracle worker

The ‘Oh Please’ queen @ r10 sounds insufferable.

[Quote] Apparently, you expect Harvard to hire a low-salary fund manager who isn’t employable elsewhere to mismanage its endowment.

Well they did hire Claudine Gay didn't they? Who I don't think is employable anywhere at the moment

TACO tacos again.

It’s not about his son with Melania. Trump wants Harvard to bestow himself an Honorary Doctorate in a lavish ceremony. Harvard does that, Trump will be happy with the University.

He couldn't care less about Barron. He probably has to write the kid's name on his palm to remember it.

If Rachel Madcow "reported" this, it must be true.

The entire system of higher education in this country needs an enema, not just Harvard.

That it costs 50-60K minimum, for a single year at a US college or university is totally unacceptable. Academia needs a full scale economic meltdown like the banking industry in 2008 to bring it back down to reality.

d trust her before trusting the grifter Melania

Indeed, Republicans have been trying to discredit Rachel Maddow for decades like they did Dan Rather with their claim about faked evidence (Bush was AWOL and that was not faked). And yet they haven't been able to pin any disinformation on her, whereas the Fox people engage in lies every time they open their mouths.

Murdoch’s Fox: the Lachlan Liars.

The Truth About Barron Trump, Harvard, and Melania:

Just as medicine owes it's incredibly inflated price to government reimbursement (Medicare and the like), which led to a game of "let's see how much we can charge in order to cover our costs and make a little profit", universities budgets have been bloated by all the government loans and grants available now. Unfortunately, a good deal of that new money goes to administration. University presidents didn't formerly make $1,000,000/year. Add in the deans, assistant deans, provosts, assistant provosts, and on and on it goes, with every larger proportion of university budgets being dedicated to administration. There's also inflation in the starting salaries of professors. In the 1980s $30,000/year was considered a good starting salary for a university professor. Now, $75,000 is fairly standard. Realize that someone who started at $30,000 and has had an average of 1-2% raises all along, may only just be earning $75,000 NOW after decades of accomplishments, tenure, full professorship. But it also depends on the field. Business schools, law schools, medical schools, engineering schools might be paying their starting professors $120,000. English, Spanish, philosophy, history - probably $55,000.

Blah blah blah and yet in other countries it is not so expensive because the government actually REGULATES health care and education R32. What vile nonsense you are spewing. The problem is not too much government involvement but too little, and no concept of health care as a right. And we all know why> it's to feed that trillion dollar annual military budget. That's what needs to get slashed.

R27, how does that justify Trump targeting a single university? And he doesn't even care about costs, he sent his son to NYU which is pricey also

r33, I'm 100% in favor of government regulation of health care. What I'm saying is that Medicare was written to fail at cost control by politicians who were being told what to write into the bill to pass it. The AMA, big Pharma, hospitals - they all had a hand in lobbying for changes in Medicare to make sure that they all benefited. For instance. not allowing Medicare ever to negotiate drug prices....one of the largest drivers of medical cost increases. The German system is much better than ours. Everyone is required to get health insurance. People who cannot afford it are subsidized by the government. Profits of the insurance companies are capped at 8%. Every year, hospitals, representatives of physicians and nurses, insurance companies and government regulators, sit down and determine the prices of medical procedures that will leave everyone solvent without massive price increases.

What I meant was that doctors and hospitals radically increased their billing under OUR system when Medicare came into being. Once Medicare announced that it would only reimburse procedures and visits up to a certain limit by PERCENTAGE, what do you think doctors and hospitals did? They increased their bills so that Medicare would reimburse their full cost. In other words, if Medicare said that they would only reimburse 80% of a doctor visit, a previous visit which might have been $60 was immediately raised to $80, so that the doctor would get all $60 bucks reimbursed. Additional reimbursement by patients and/or secondary insurances would just be gravy. Same for hospital billings. There's a reason that bandages are billed as $100 for a box of bandages (bandages that would cost $3 at the Walgreens.

Meanwhile conservatives claim they are for prrivatization and the market but they have opposed strenuously every effort to expand the SUPPLY of medical services available. In the 1940s a liberal Congress tripled the number of medical schools and that's why in the sixties and seventies American health care was still affordable: indeed the envy of the world. But if you read any of the conservative or fake "libertarian" screeds against government in health care you will see that they only look at demand not supply. American conservatism really is a cover for looting by the rich, and genocide for the poor. Remember Obama wanted two things to fix the problems with Romneycare: he wanted a public option and he wanted a modest increase in doctors. But thanks to turncoat democrats Conrad Burns, Mary Landrieu, and the Florda shitferbrains Nelson, he didn't get it. The result was three years of cost control followed by business as usual. And the Medicare Advantage scam is still running! What we need is a real second party, one that is anti-corruption, because the Republicans today are just a criminal gang of looters, and not a real political party.

Do they just hire strangers off the street?

A model of prrobitty compared to anyone has ever worked for Trump in any capacity

Gino has been the subject of a number of articles and it appears that she has a long history of falsifying data for research purposes. The area she's in, behavioral science applied to economics, has always been considered a bit iffy by scientists, basically "sexy" research results in search of hypotheses.