Richard K Vedder, Columnist

Cut Off Harvard to Save America

University endowments promote inefficiency and are anti-meritocratic.

February 20, 2014 at 2:03 PM UTC

Richard Vedder, an economist, directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and teaches at Ohio University. He is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

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College endowments totaled $448.6 billion in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2013, an increase of 11.7 percent compared with a year earlier, according to recently released data.

As we know, this wealth is concentrated among a privileged few. Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities all have almost $2 million in endowment funds for every student.