5 months ago
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(NewsNation) — The country’s 8 prestigious Ivy League colleges and universities took successful much than $6 cardinal successful national backing successful fiscal twelvemonth 2023, but however those institutions of higher acquisition are utilizing taxation dollars has raised eyebrows implicit the usage of nationalist money.
Ivy League schools similar Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania person been targeted by President Donald Trump recently. Trump withheld $175 cardinal successful national wealth from UPenn implicit its argumentation of allowing transgender athletes to enactment successful women’s sports.
Trump also canceled $400 cardinal successful national grants and contracts from Columbia aft the White House said the assemblage failed to support Jewish students.
However, Trump’s actions travel arsenic a NewsNation probe into Ivy League backing recovered that the 8 Ivy League schools are sitting connected much than $185 cardinal successful endowment money, including $50 cardinal astatine Harvard and $41 cardinal astatine Yale.
Yet NewsNation’s investigation of the school’s audited fiscal statements shows that the bulk of nationalist backing fixed to Ivy League schools goes to indirect betterment costs, which are besides considered on-campus overhead. For instance, Harvard takes astir 69% of the apical of national probe grants for the on-campus overhead, portion Yale takes astir 67.5%, followed by Columbia (64.5%) and Cornell and Dartmouth (64%).
“The grants are designed to bash bully things, and galore of them do,” Benjamin Ginsberg, a prof astatine Johns Hopkins University, told NewsNation. “But universities person tried to marque a small spot of wealth connected those activities, and truthful they complaint overhead connected national probe dollars, and that wealth is not spent connected the nominal enactment for which the assistance is given.”
When adjusted, of the approximate $820 cardinal Harvard took successful for research, only astir $248 cardinal went for research, NewsNation found. At Columbia, which received $1.5 cardinal successful probe grants, lone about $400 cardinal was devoted to probe aft it took 64.5% for overhead.
“It doesn’t marque sense,” Ginsberg told NewsNation, adding that alternatively than spending taxation dollars connected gathering improvements and repairs, taxation dollars are being spent connected hiring much bureaucrats.
However, arsenic Trump has held backmost national funding, the National Institutes of Health has precocious installed a 15% headdress connected national probe backing that the Ivy League schools receive, meaning that adjacent deeper cuts volition beryllium taken successful taxation dollars being sent to the institutions. Also, Ivy League universities are among much than 50 higher acquisition institutions being investigated for their continued diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Scott Walter, the president of Capital Research Center, told NewsNation that Trump is doing what is close successful starting conversations astir however universities similar Columbia are funded and however the respective schools are utilizing those dollars.
"Nobody should beryllium capable to provender astatine the national trough without having to warrant themselves without Americans knowing what they're getting from the remainder of us," Walter said. "This is perfectly the speech we request to beryllium having. Some of that wealth volition get justified, and immoderate of it volition not."
