evidence: This problem won’t affect elite institutions, as they receive 10 to 20 times more applications than they have freshman seats. Harvard sitting on a $52 billion endowment while limiting freshman seats to 1,500 defines what it is to be a for-profit firm. Any university that doesn’t increase the size of its freshman class faster than population growth should lose its tax-free status on the return from its endowment. At some of these colleges, the endowments have surpassed the GDP of a Central American nation. We (faculty and administrators) are public servants, not fucking Birkin bags. [...] Harvard sitting on a $52 billion endowment while limiting freshman seats to 1,500 defines what it is to be a for-profit firm. Any university that doesn’t increase the size of its freshman class faster than population growth should lose its tax-free status on the return from its endowment. At some of these colleges, the endowments have surpassed the GDP of a Central American nation. We (faculty and administrators) are public servants, not fucking Birkin bags. [...] Can we bundle all the ‘endowments’, ie the hedge funds that are the college / university engines…and point all that at tuition and course enrichment? Because FFS, there is no value there.