Current Events > Harvard, with a $40 Billion Endowment, wanted to take $8.7 million from stimulus

(+) Yeah! (+)

After being grilled publically by Trump at yesterday's coronavirus taskforce conference and subsequent criticism by critics, Harvard will return the $8.7 million made available from the taxpayer-funded CARES act. The Ivy League school, with the largest endowment fund in the world, was also not the only prestigious institution to have received a nice sum:
Columbia: $12.8 million
Cornell: $12.8 million
Yale: $7 million
Princeton: ~$2.5 million

Ex-Presidential Candidate for UBI (Universal Basic Income) Andrew Yang scathingly wrote on twitter:
https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1252983195345342464?s=20

Initially, Harvard, in it's typical tone deaf self, announced that it would not be returning the money, as half would be allocated to students in need; before backpedaling to allocating all of the funding to student aid, before finally announcing that it would not be taking the money at all. The latest coming after Shake Shack, with 189 restaurants and nearly 8000 workers, returned nearly $10 million taken from the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program, forgivable loans for small businesses, employing 500 workers or less, if they pay to keep employees on payroll).

To note, Harvard's own alumni magazine states:
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/01/harvard-finances-budget

Harvard achieved its sixth consecutive budget surplussome $298 million, up from $196 million in the prior yearaccording to the Universitys annual financial report for the fiscal period ended June 30, 2019, published in late October. The surpluses realized from fiscal 2014 through the most recent year now total $769 millionthe happy result of the proceeds from the $9.62 billion Harvard Campaign, a continued benign U.S. economic environment, and internal spending restraint. That cushionsurely the envy of other institutions of higher educationprovides some protection against economic or financial adversity, and creates flexibility in paying for the continuing campus construction boom.

And if you're asking: "Harvard must be doing something important with the money! so that's why they need more" Well, I guess if you mean constructing new buildings and building up that Endowment fund, sure, I guess that's more important than public universities and smaller primary education schools across the nation.

No, a private college with that type of funding, especially with that much of a surplus, should not be getting loans that were for small businesses.

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Not only do they not need it, they should reimburse students for tuition/housing that students already paid for with their ridiculous sums of money.

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It's almost like there should be someone overseeing who gets the money. Wasn't there something like that in the original bill? Hm. Wonder what happened to him.

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