[washingtonismoney]

It's an interesting argument, but one that avoids some of the trade-offs involved with modern university. If your perspective is undergraduate-focused than the large endowments of schools like Stanford make somewhere between zero and negative sense. But of course Stanford (and schools like it) aren't merely in the undergraduate business. They're also, variously, in the graduate student business and the scholarship and research business. And pushing the frontier of knowledge in science and technology is very capital intensive. (As a former humanities major, no disrespect to those scholars, but the information technology revolution has done its work -- all it takes is some big brains thinking big thoughts in those fields.)

For those purposes, a jumbo-sized endowment looks much more necessary. Since the U.S.'s current strong position in cutting-edge research is one of its major economic and geopolitical assets -- and since, unfortunately, state support of public schools in otherwise economically struggling regions is in decline -- I wouldn't be cavalier about dismissing the importance of this kind of work.

The thing is, there are always trade-offs. Maybe taxing super-sized endowments is right, maybe not. Worth having a good discussion first. (For what it's worth, I think there are a lot of products with obvious negative externalities -- alcohol, gas, to name a couple -- that could be taxed first.)

[washingtonismoney]

It's an interesting argument, but one that avoids some of the trade-offs involved with modern university. If your perspective is undergraduate-focused than the large endowments of schools like Stanford make somewhere between zero and negative sense. But of course Stanford (and schools like it) aren't merely in the undergraduate business. They're also, variously, in the graduate student business and the scholarship and research business. And pushing the frontier of knowledge in science and technology is very capital intensive. (As a former humanities major, no disrespect to those scholars, but the information technology revolution has done its work -- all it takes is some big brains thinking big thoughts in those fields.)

For those purposes, a jumbo-sized endowment looks much more necessary. Since the U.S.'s current strong position in cutting-edge research is one of its major economic and geopolitical assets -- and since, unfortunately, state support of public schools in otherwise economically struggling regions is in decline -- I wouldn't be cavalier about dismissing the importance of this kind of work.

The thing is, there are always trade-offs. Maybe taxing super-sized endowments is right, maybe not. Worth having a good discussion first. (For what it's worth, I think there are a lot of products with obvious negative externalities -- alcohol, gas, to name a couple -- that could be taxed first.)