In Sunday's Washington Post we hear Yale President Richard Levin say: Yale and Harvard can't win with critics. "If we don't spend our resources for a social good, we are criticized," Levin said. "If we do spend our resources for a social good, we are criticized. We are trying to strike a balance."
Pah...lease!! With over how much money in the fund balance pot and all those tangible assets and, waiting in the wings, years of alumni waiting to leave their special school money, Yale like Harvard and a number of schools singled out by Senator Grassley in his latest effort to hold nonprofits accountable can indeed, I believe, afford to be more generous.
I've got an idea. Why doesn't each Ivy League school take a portion of its fund balance and make a no-interest loan to the traditional black universities to help them build their capacity to subsidize the education of a whole lot of smart folks who don't have the means or the elite access to the Ivy Leagues? Now that would be filling a void that the market just isn't ready to fill, the market including the Ivy Leagues. After all, the Ivy Leagues weren't really that available to give equal opportunities to the Black and Latino communities over the years. Why not now that money isn't an obstacle (if it ever was)?