Harvard University, November 16, 2012 (Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford have all turned down funds provided to them by Congress’s coronavirus spending package. Each university was slated to receive roughly $7 million in emergency funding before a public backlash pressured their administrations to decline the funding. Critics argue that elite universities’ multi-billion-dollar endowments leave them well-positioned to weather the recession.


Trump joined in, saying in a press conference on Wednesday, “They have one of the largest endowments anywhere in the country, maybe in the world, I guess, and they’re going to pay back that money.”

Harvard, Yale, and the rest are tacitly admitting that they do not deserve pandemic-relief funding. But in normal times, they receive massive annual subsidies. By one estimate, Ivy League schools receive around $7 billion in taxpayer money every year. Federal dollars directly fund university research and tuition fees, while tax benefits constitute another massive subsidy to elite U.S. colleges.

If we shouldn’t subsidize universities during recessions, should we subsidize them when the going is good?