
Universities Are Becoming Billion-Dollar Hedge Funds with Schools Attached - mgdo
http://www.thenation.com/article/universities-are-becoming-billion-dollar-hedge-funds-with-schools-attached/
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dalke
> "the latest wisecrack about Harvard"

"Latest" in this case means "over 5 years old, but the author recently heard
about it." Eg, the following 2010 comment at [http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2010/05/secret-lives-of-profe...](http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2010/05/secret-lives-of-professors.html) uses the exact
same phrase:

"It is complicated, but one way to look at it is that Harvard is a very large
hedge fund with a university attached to it (which gets a tiny fraction of the
fund's payout each year)."

And earlier 2007 piece titled "Goodbye, Princeton University" uses a similar
construction, at
[http://www.nassauweekly.com/goodbye_princeton_university/](http://www.nassauweekly.com/goodbye_princeton_university/)
:

"Princeton University has ceased being primarily an institution of higher
learning and is, like Goldman, a huge hedge-fund with a university that it
runs as a side project."

We also see it in several previous HN threads (see
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=harvard%20hedge%20fund&sort=by...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=harvard%20hedge%20fund&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
). The oldest is from 8 years ago, referencing a 2008 article titled "Is
Harvard Just a Tax-Free Hedge Fund?" at
[http://theamericanscene.com/2008/05/12/is-harvard-just-a-
tax...](http://theamericanscene.com/2008/05/12/is-harvard-just-a-tax-free-
hedge-fund)

> Viewed purely in terms of economics, Harvard is really a $40 billion tax-
> free hedge fund with a very large marketing and PR arm called Harvard
> University that has the job of raising the investment capital and protecting
> the fund’s preferential tax treatment.

