<p>Harvard could put some freshman at the old Radcliff campus . . . the HORROR!</p>
<p>Isn’t that already filled with the residents of Cabot, Currier and Pforzheimer Houses (or, if you’re as old as I am, South, Currier and North Houses)?</p>
<p>Legacy will, at least, be the tie-breaker among equally qualified applicants.</p>
<p>Re #69: I love the story about the heiress advised to spend a summer waiting tables, but I think Damon Albarn and Pulp wrote the reply years ago. For your weekend listening enjoyment, we offer up the William Shatner (yes, William Shatner) cover. </p>
<p>[Joe</a> Jackson - Videos](<a href=“http://www.joejackson.com/lenowm.htm]Joe”>http://www.joejackson.com/lenowm.htm)</p>
<p>To those who are responding that they are private institutions so they can do what they like, remember that being allowed to incorporate, especially as a nonprofit, is actually a significant privilege bestowed by society, on the basis that corporations (especially nonprofits) supply some social benefit.</p>
<p>When corporations go bankrupt or can’t pay their bills, the owners of the company such as the shareholders are protected from those losses. Whereas if I go bankrupt, as a noncorporate entity, I lose everything I have.</p>
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<p>Generally false. When corporations go bankruptcy, the shareholders typically lose everything. They are the last creditors to be paid. When an individual files bankruptcy, typically he retains all of his property because of exemptions. Other than those two facts, your statement is true.</p>
<p>Keepitoyourself, you have the option of attending a for-profit college if you find the not-for-profit status of universities so offensive.</p>
<p>If you don’t approve of the social benefit that not-for-profit colleges have provided, then you can boycott Google, a wide range of medical therapies and devices, the Internet, etc, virtually of which were developed and invented by not-for-profit colleges. You can insist on being treated at a Walmart or CVS walk-in clinic instead of a university run teaching hospital if you have a heart attack or get into a car accident.</p>
<p>There are always for-profit options if you don’t like the social benefits that these non-profit college are offering society.</p>
<p>Read the article in the OP which I found basically silly and contained some factual errors. That said, this sentence at the end, was reasonable:
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<p>Expanding is a supply issue, not a demand one. Money is an issue, even with a $30 billion endowment. A few years ago, Harvard built new facilities. I believe spending in the $600 million range. With the 2008 bust, and the cost of the debt, there was a lot of talk about cutbacks in spending at the College. Not sure how it turned out.</p>
<p>Assuming that money is not an issue, there is a quality of product issue. As an analogy, look at food service on an air craft carrier. They use the same ingredients to serve 500 officers and 5,000 enlisted. But, the quality of food for the officers is higher. The reason? It is much easier to deliver a high quality product for 500 than for 5,000.</p>
<p>In a classical capitalistic system, an increase in supply is not necessarily done by one company. It is also accomplished by other competitors entering the market place. You can be the world’s best <whatever>, but you can only service so many customers. Other people enter the market to satisfy the demand.</whatever></p>
<p>If it were so easy for Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, etc. to scale up their product, then it would be easy for other competitors to start their own. It is not like Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, have a patent, or special formula.</p>
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<p>So if I own $50,000 of shares in a company, and that company goes bankrupt, I can lose everything? Like my house, car, other savings? I thought I only lost the value of the shares.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if I as an individual go bankrupt, I get to keep all the stuff in my bank accounts?</p>
<p>I think you have it the wrong way around.</p>
<p>blossom, I am frankly amazed and impressed that you have managed to misrepresent what I said in so many ways.</p>
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<p>First of all, I never said that I found their nonprofit status offensive. I did say that it is a privilege that comes with responsibilities as well as rights. So all the “they’re private, they can do what they want!” cry is a bit misguided.</p>
<p>Some for-profits are worse. They basically seem to be a means of extracting taxpayer money via student loans and the GI bill, and saddling the students with the bill.</p>
<p>I’m not denying that there are huge benefits to society of nonprofit and universities hospitals. My benefit is with some particular nonprofits. If you have a ‘nonprofit’ hospital that makes a huge operating profit, and pays its chief executive millions, you have to wonder whether that is really what nonprofit status was intended for. Or when top universities charge huge amounts, have endowments in the billions, and act as gatekeepers to the elite for a tiny number of people…</p>
<p>They want to keep their schools elite and prestigious, and letting more students in, would be counter productive.</p>
<p>[Budweiser</a> Sued for Watering Down Its Beer (BUD)](<a href=“http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/02/27/budweiser-sued-for-watering-down-its-beer.aspx]Budweiser”>Budweiser Sued for Watering Down Its Beer | The Motley Fool)</p>
<p>Watering down Bud is like adding 100 students to a university undergrad population of 30K. Who would notice? :)</p>
<p>Just the fact that many many students now attend college vs trade schools etc…
the ability to get a college degree has grown significantly from years ago.</p>
<p>maybe (hopefully, finally?) the whole notion of ‘elite’ is slowly approaching obsolescence…</p>
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<p>You are corrrect, you lose only the investment in the company, not “everything”. I meant “everything” to mean what you had invested. My language was imprecise. My statement that individuals fiing bankruptcy typically keep all their assets stands. I was a bankruptcy attorney for over thirty years and a bankruptcy trustee for about fifteen years. While it will vary by jurisdiction and by individual trustee, 90+% of all individual bankrutpcies are closed as “No Asset” cases and no money or property is taken from the individual. If you are stupid enough to file bankruptcy with $5K in the bank, you will probably lose it!</p>
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<p>Define “top”, “huge”, “elite”, and “tiny”.</p>
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<p>Correct. But that “social benefit” does not have to be what you/we decide it should be. That “social benefit” is clearly spelled out in the colleges’s mission statements and bylaws, and as long as they adhere to their mission statements and bylaws, this discussion is moot. (Just because some author suggests that they change their mission/bylaws doesn’t mean that they should, or more importantly, have to.)</p>
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<p>As long as they are complying with the mission under which they recieved their non-profit status, they are good-to-go. (Their “intent” is clearly spelled out, and available for public review, by law.) </p>
<p>If you want their ‘intent’ to be (forcibly?) changed, then you need to re-write the tax code. :)</p>
<p>“My benefit is with some particular nonprofits. If you have a ‘nonprofit’ hospital that makes a huge operating profit, and pays its chief executive millions, you have to wonder whether that is really what nonprofit status was intended for. Or when top universities charge huge amounts, have endowments in the billions, and act as gatekeepers to the elite for a tiny number of people.”</p>
<p>But they aren’t gatekeepers to the elite the way you all think. They may be gatekeepers to certain industries, but that’s all. Honestly, people on here get so stupid about not realizing that hardworking, smart people from all educational backgrounds can wind up being elite SES.</p>
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<p>It’s already obsolete for anyone interested in factual analysis rather than mythology.</p>