This week, we begin by talking about Twitter having just given me $1,700 for being such a successful influencer. Getting free money from a corporation isn’t something that happens every day, so it was a very pleasant surprise. This leads to a discussion about how each of us uses the platform and what the incentives of this profit-sharing model will mean for how Twitter functions in the future.
Inez is wrong about Harvard and Yale and other elite schools and student loan debt. According to US News report for graduating class of 2019, only 2% of Harvard students took federal loan, and the median loan was just 12,000 dollars. This is because ivy league schools offer aid to most lower middle class and middle class families. While at low ranked university like Alabama State, 89% took out federal loan with a median loan of 54,000 dollars. How is fair to tax ivy league endowments when it is not even ivy league schools or other top schools like Stanford that are contributing to student loan crisis. So, in Inez's view colleges like Stanford, Harvard etc need to pay to discharge loans for graduates of Alabama state. This is what happens when culture war triumphs logic.
It’s fair because there’s no reason those hedge funds with schools attached should be shielded from what would be normal taxation. There are some proposals that tie this to the individual college’s graduates to avoid the imbalance you describe, but yeah, you’re right, I’m just not feeling charitable towards the top tier of elite schools either and I don’t mind punishing them for the sins of State U.
Thank you for replying. I understand the impulse to punish universities but there will be downstream effects.
Endowments cover major cost of running university. One- third of Harvard budget comes from endowment returns. Tuition is just 20% of the total budget and most of it comes from international students and graduate students. Secondly, Harvard is shielded from capital gains tax like every other charitable institution in America.
Conservative think tanks, family foundations use investment returns to fund their yearly budget. Taxing endowment of a non-profit is a pandora's box, liberals will argue for tax on investment returns of charitable foundations, Churches, think tanks etc. There is a reason American law is very broad on what could qualify as non-profit. If one looks across the pond at UK, recently, The LGB foundation was threatened by charity commission with removal of charitable status as they felt it was anti-Trans. Liberals are better at weaponizing culture war.
To me, the biggest issue with colleges is the mismatch between their value and their cost.
Long gone are the days when colleges claimed to make well-rounded, erudite people...all college marketing is based solely on helping students gain employment. Yet many students emerge with degrees that render them essentially unemployable, all the while paying the same prices as someone in a high-demand major.
Why should someone graduating college with a Communications degree pay the same cost as someone getting an Electrical Engineering degree when their job prospects are so dramatically different? There is no place else in life where that is the case. But if colleges believe the value between these two is the same, they should have skin in the game to justify that concept.
Once students leave the school (with or without a degree), the college should be on the hook for the employment status of that student based on a % of their loan amount. In other words, if a student annually makes less than, let’s say, 20% of their loan amount, the school is on the hook for the delta.
This would do a few things-
1) Create a tier system where the more valuable degrees are higher cost (though possibly lower than now) and less valuable ones are lower cost.
2) The degrees with the lowest value (think all the identity-based curriculum) will simply cease to exist because, now that there is a price/value match, there would be no way to implement those departments profitably.
3) Colleges would be forced to get a better handle on their overhead (DEI admins, etc.) bc that cost would come straight from the bottom line.
please consider using a transcription service (I like Temi but there are many) to post transcripts. I can read much faster than I can listen and my listening time is already pretty full with some excellent podcasts (the Rest is History, The History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, and Huberman Labs), so transcripts here would be really awesome. You don't even need to clean them up! I'm fine with one with some mistranscriptions - context usually resolves those.
Could you identify Inez? I’m a new listener and you seem to assume that everyone knows who she is and why she’s on your podcast. She’s an impressive speaker and deserves some recognition.
Inez is wrong about Harvard and Yale and other elite schools and student loan debt. According to US News report for graduating class of 2019, only 2% of Harvard students took federal loan, and the median loan was just 12,000 dollars. This is because ivy league schools offer aid to most lower middle class and middle class families. While at low ranked university like Alabama State, 89% took out federal loan with a median loan of 54,000 dollars. How is fair to tax ivy league endowments when it is not even ivy league schools or other top schools like Stanford that are contributing to student loan crisis. So, in Inez's view colleges like Stanford, Harvard etc need to pay to discharge loans for graduates of Alabama state. This is what happens when culture war triumphs logic.
It’s fair because there’s no reason those hedge funds with schools attached should be shielded from what would be normal taxation. There are some proposals that tie this to the individual college’s graduates to avoid the imbalance you describe, but yeah, you’re right, I’m just not feeling charitable towards the top tier of elite schools either and I don’t mind punishing them for the sins of State U.
Thank you for replying. I understand the impulse to punish universities but there will be downstream effects.
Endowments cover major cost of running university. One- third of Harvard budget comes from endowment returns. Tuition is just 20% of the total budget and most of it comes from international students and graduate students. Secondly, Harvard is shielded from capital gains tax like every other charitable institution in America.
Conservative think tanks, family foundations use investment returns to fund their yearly budget. Taxing endowment of a non-profit is a pandora's box, liberals will argue for tax on investment returns of charitable foundations, Churches, think tanks etc. There is a reason American law is very broad on what could qualify as non-profit. If one looks across the pond at UK, recently, The LGB foundation was threatened by charity commission with removal of charitable status as they felt it was anti-Trans. Liberals are better at weaponizing culture war.
To me, the biggest issue with colleges is the mismatch between their value and their cost.
Long gone are the days when colleges claimed to make well-rounded, erudite people...all college marketing is based solely on helping students gain employment. Yet many students emerge with degrees that render them essentially unemployable, all the while paying the same prices as someone in a high-demand major.
Why should someone graduating college with a Communications degree pay the same cost as someone getting an Electrical Engineering degree when their job prospects are so dramatically different? There is no place else in life where that is the case. But if colleges believe the value between these two is the same, they should have skin in the game to justify that concept.
Once students leave the school (with or without a degree), the college should be on the hook for the employment status of that student based on a % of their loan amount. In other words, if a student annually makes less than, let’s say, 20% of their loan amount, the school is on the hook for the delta.
This would do a few things-
1) Create a tier system where the more valuable degrees are higher cost (though possibly lower than now) and less valuable ones are lower cost.
2) The degrees with the lowest value (think all the identity-based curriculum) will simply cease to exist because, now that there is a price/value match, there would be no way to implement those departments profitably.
3) Colleges would be forced to get a better handle on their overhead (DEI admins, etc.) bc that cost would come straight from the bottom line.
please consider using a transcription service (I like Temi but there are many) to post transcripts. I can read much faster than I can listen and my listening time is already pretty full with some excellent podcasts (the Rest is History, The History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, and Huberman Labs), so transcripts here would be really awesome. You don't even need to clean them up! I'm fine with one with some mistranscriptions - context usually resolves those.
Thanks!
Could you identify Inez? I’m a new listener and you seem to assume that everyone knows who she is and why she’s on your podcast. She’s an impressive speaker and deserves some recognition.
Selling influence is usually non-profit?
Radfemhitler is a glowie and exists to convince Dissident Right incels to dox themselves along with all the other Right Wing E-Girls.