Yeah but it’s such a poorly written parody that most people seem to miss that.
Abolishing the prestige-biased rankings would be more beneficial IMO.
Instead of “spreading the wealth”, we should be “spreading the smart students”.
The piece is obviously intended as a parody of left-wing populism, but as parody, it’s extremely poorly done. Rather than lampooning the Left, Reynolds manages only to make himself out to be a buffoon.
Reynolds is a libertarian. In addition to being a law professor, he’s a widely read blogger and author of popular books and opinion pieces. Some call him a conservative, but he holds libertarian views on social issues like abortion and gay rights. He sometimes describes himself as a “libertarian transhumanist,” by which he means he believes in the “right to human enhancement” which in his view is best achieved through personal autonomy and rational self-interest in an unfettered market economy, subject to minimal government interference. He has written in opposition to government subsidies for student financial aid and the mortgage interest deduction, arguing that a college education and homeownership are merely markers of middle-class success which comes from self-discipline, a strong work ethic, the ability to defer gratification, etc., and that government attempts to artificially expand the middle class by subsidizing the markers only dilutes and undermines the middle class and its virtues, because it teaches people exactly the wrong lesson, namely that you become part of the middle class through government handouts.
In short, this guy doesn’t believe a word of what he writes here. No doubt he thought what he wrote would be seen as so patently ridiculous that his readers would instantly recognize it as a spoof. Apparently not, since so many on CC immediately got their undies in a bunch rushing to denounce the author. So his attempt at biting satire lampooning the Left failed miserably. Oh, well. There are worse sins, I suppose.
Feeling stupid here. But even a parody offers up the usual antagonism to the Ivies et al. Since “Ivies” is in the title, there will be hundreds of responses on this thread- including mine of course!
Decide Somehow, your idea is clever: it often seems our public schools system has similar goals 
Upon rereading the article, I guess I can see the sarcasm. One wonders, however, whether USAToday was the best vehicle for a piece of this kind.
Wow, the OP is SOOOOOOO wrong.
One of my classmates used to steal bikes from our campus. Did very well in classes too.
There are much better examples of money = right out there…
“These “elite” schools are doing more to eliminate inequality than most any organization in the country,”
More than almost all organizations in this country? I don’t think so. They do an admirable job of “lifting” students out of lower SES classes, but really, only a relative handful per year. Their impact is very limited. (I’m not saying that they ought to do more; that only needs to be their mission if they want it to be.) Community college education lifts waaaaaaaay more young people out of poverty than the Ivies do.
Wow. Some serious scary lynch mob on this website.
I happen to agree with a lot of what the author proposes. For the record he is not proposing that we abolish the Ivy League, but that we tax their rich endowments. Why should these rich schools continue to receive tax benefits? In addition, the opacity of holistic admissions allow these schools to favor certain demographics over others - athletes, legacies, URMs, developments, which flies in the face of America’s ideal of meritocracy. The dominance of Ivy and esp. Harvard grads (1/4) of in the Obama administration should give everyone pause. Where is the diversity in thoughts? The Supreme Court is even worse. Two out of three branches of our government are now completely dominated by a group of people who graduated from just a handful of schools in one little corner of the country. Where is the “diversity” that these schools are simultaneously pushing? And then we wonder why the administration is increasingly out of touch with the rest of the country.
If it is true as these schools contend that each year they could replace the entire class of admits with the next 2-3 cohorts and they’d be just as qualified, then these schools should provide the same need based aid to all these equally qualified students (by GPA and test scores) who were turned away because they were not part of the favored demographics, allow these top students to attend other schools of their choice where they are actually accepted. This is a great way to ensure that the best and brightest in this country truly get the same opportunity to receive a quality education.
The champagne socialists running and graduating from these schools are often among the most vocal proponents of equality. I applaud the author for calling on them to put their money where their mouth is, and do their part to ensure equality in educational opportunity for all the best and brightest in this country. It’s bad enough that they form their elitist little clubs by promoting their own in academia, law, media, arts, politics and business, the least they could do is stop being such shameless greedy hoarders of their tax free endowments, which btw is a prime example of 99% of America subsidizing the 1%.
I am not sure why some are so convinced it is a parody, although I did say myself I thought I was reading The Onion. But if he truly meant it as such, he needed to make that clear at the end, because there have been too many “serious” proposals similar to this before, especially the part about taxing endowments over $1 billion. That I have seen several times, and they definitely were not all parodies. In fact virtually all of his comments about the Ivies I have seen from serious critics, from people that are usually identified as liberal.
Also, back into my role as mod:
*I deleted other posts that got on the OP for posting this, and frankly I don’t get it. First, this was actually published in a major national newspaper. How can it be out of bounds to discuss? Second, there is nothing wrong with a member that likes to start difficult/contentious/(pick a new adjective) conversations, as long as they are within the Terms of Service. We see this on a reasonably regular basis, just like we see threads about kitchen remodeling. I WILL REMIND ALL THAT MAKING DISPARAGING REMARKS ABOUT OTHER MEMBERS ON THE PUBLIC BOARDS IS A VIOLATION OF THE TERMS OF SERVICE. If you truly thought this was out of bounds for some reason, then report it, don’t disparage the person publicly. In this case I likely would have sent a note back to the person reporting it that the thread is, in fact, perfectly legitimate.
The only thing I don’t like about this proposal is that it singles out Ivies for their perceived “left” politics. If it were part of a larger program of taxing accumulated wealth I would support it.
I would love living in a country which penalizes successful institutions at the expense of those which are not. Let’s punish successful endowment managers. It’s much better for society to have poorly performing investment portfolios. Let’s punish institutions which manage to graduate a high percentage of their students in four years so that everyone can be like XYZ college with a 35% graduation rate. Let’s make sure to demonize institutions which do what they claim to do- take 18 year old’s with a HS education and churn out college graduates who become employed or get into graduate school. It’s much better for America if everyone functioned like the for-profit colleges which churn out kids who are heavily in debt and in many cases, are no more employable than they were when they started.
It’s great to benchmark ourselves against the worst performing institutions in America- bad at managing money, bad at educating, bad at graduating. Let’s attack Harvard, shall we?
Charitable organizations get tax breaks on the premise that they are doing charitable things with the money and that any money taken for taxes will not be available to help the needy, to do medical research, or to do any of the charitable purposes for the greater good of society as a whole.
Charitable organizations that are sitting on large endowments, that spend only a tiny fraction of that endowment for charitable purposes and who pay their heads millions of dollars in salaries are not serving the general good.
I do think that tax breaks need to be evaluated based on this type of criteria, whether we’re talking about the United Way, the Goodwill, the Red Cross or a university.
Well satire, not parody - because of his use of the term “modest proposal”.
…which to most, means satire of a particular sort:
Just noting that @sherpa in the spirit of humanities grads everywhere, made a significant error, which may have been a math error or a reading error, I’m not sure. $18 billion or so divided by 8,000 students or so is a little more than $2 million, but the not-so-modest proposal was to spend only 10% of endowments over $1 billion on financial aid. That works out to a little more than $200,000 per year, not $2 million.
I note also that if you are also taxing endowments over $1 billion, a 10% payout rate on financial aid is going to shrink the endowment PDQ. Even Yale and Harvard at their most successful have not had sustained endowment earningsplus contributions at 15% per annum or higher over any substantial period, other than the periods when that was the base inflation rate.
Making huge endowments taxable is not such a bad idea. I am far from sure $1 billion is the right threshold number, or that the number should be absolute as opposed to relative to size. A billion dollars goes a lot farther at Amherst than at Michigan.
The author maybe should have thought about how his proposals would actually work. If Princeton were required to spend 10% of its endowment over $1 billion every year, after tax, on financial aid, and at the same time it were required to admit students solely on the basis of test scores and GPA, (a) it would have an astronomical nominal tuition, (b) it would charge actual students no tuition, and © as a group those students would probably be very wealthy and very white and Asian. Nice for them, for a generation or so until Princeton’s money runs out, but not necessarily great public policy, and certainly nothing that would do much to eliminate inequality.
@sherpa - Thanks. You made my day.
" In addition, the opacity of holistic admissions allow these schools to favor certain demographics over others - athletes, legacies, URMs, developments, which flies in the face of America’s ideal of meritocracy."
That’s right. We should go back to the more meritocratic days of the Ivy League in which you got in because you went to the right private prep school and your headmaster and the dean of admissions shook hands.
" The dominance of Ivy and esp. Harvard grads (1/4) of in the Obama administration should give everyone pause. Where is the diversity in thoughts? "
Why would you assume everyone from certain schools thinks alike? What an odd assumption.
“The Supreme Court is even worse. Two out of three branches of our government are now completely dominated by a group of people who graduated from just a handful of schools in one little corner of the country.”
Yeah. That Supreme Court, they are always having the same opinion on every case!! LOL
@JHS - Good catch. The error was mathematical, not comprehensional, or so I claim. I’d also considered the point you made of the declining endowment yielding progressively smaller aid, but chose not to address it (again, so I claim).
I don’t think it’s odd.
Different life experiences may change one’s perspectives on things. The kid on track to attend Harvard will likely spend fewer hours playing Xbox and skipping rocks across the nearby river growing up compared to the kid on track to attend Chico State. Having people with different life experiences translates to more diverse thoughts/ideas.
It’s OK with me if we miss out on the XBox kid’s contribution on the Supreme Court.
is this real