Like Harvard, MIT takes an official position that inequality is bad. In an ideal world, all humans would have the same wealth and income and, therefore, all states would have the same wealth and income. Here’s an example from MIT’s official news page:
Inequality is “a threat to America’s values and political system”. MIT is a richer-than-average university and, thanks to the Feds pouring all of the nation’s wealth into higher ed and health care, its Massachusetts home is the richest state (Washington, D.C. is yet richer, but not a state). One would think that MIT would, therefore, refuse federal grant money, preferring to fund itself via state tax dollars and private/endowment dollars. Every dollar refused by MIT could be spent at University of Michigan, for example, a less-rich university in a poorer-than-average state.
Instead of refusing federal money, though, MIT is fighting to keep it while preserving the school’s passion for race-based admissions and Rainbow Flagism. The Hill:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Friday rejected the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which would have required sweeping changes on campus in exchange for a funding advantage in federal grant awards.
The 10-point memo was provided to nine higher learning institutions last week, requiring reforms such as a rewiring of the admissions process by adjusting the consideration of race or ethnicity, student grading and demanding that transgender women be excluded from women’s locker rooms and sports teams.
I still can’t figure out why the Trump administration wants to fund the Racism League schools. What institution ever changed in response to being showered with billions of dollars? The federal government could send its research dollars to universities that never engaged in race discrimination and/or never adopted Rainbow Flagism as an official religion. The Queers for Palestine universities would find a way to replace the federal funds with state and/or private funds and/or research groups would follow the federal money by moving to to the non-racist universities. Nowhere in the MIT Mission Statement is “hoover up as many federal tax dollars as possible”. In fact, the statement describes MIT as a purely altruistic enterprise working to help humanity and, therefore, anything that MIT can do to reduce inequality would be a positive step:
Here’s an example of two Nobelists moving from MIT to Zurich in response to a “CHF 26 million donation from the Lemann Foundation” (26 million Swiss Francs translates to 32.5 million post-Bidenflation dollars; see exchange rate chart below for how the USD was worth 1.4 Swiss Francs in 2003 and, thanks to the inflation-free environment that Congress has created via deficit spending, is now worth 0.8 Swiss Francs):
The Nobel Prize-winning economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join the University of Zurich in July 2026. Using external funds provided by the Lemann Foundation, the two researchers will establish a new center for development economics, education and public policy.
“Nobel laureate Esther Duflo proposes taxing 3,000 billionaires to protect the world’s poorest from climate change—and most Americans likely agree with the plan” (Fortune 2024) . After evaluating the $32.5 million deal, the professor who is passionate about making billionaires pay their fair share has decided to move from Maskachusetts (top personal income tax rate of 46 percent, state+federal) to a country that is renowned as a tax haven for the world’s richest people (Puerto Rico is better for U.S. citizens, though).
Consider the following:
Global top 20 universities by number of ultra high net worth alumni (>$30 million):
1 United States Harvard University 13,650 $4,769 billion
2 United States Stanford University 5,580 $2,899 billion
3 United States University of Pennsylvania 5,575 $1,780 billion
4 United States Columbia University 3,925 $1,501 billion
5 United States New York University 3,380 $712 billion
6 United States Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2,785 $990 billion
7 United Kingdom University of Cambridge 2,760 $390 billion
8 United States Northwestern University 2,725 $389 billion
9 United States University of Southern California 2,645 $548 billion
10 United States University of Chicago 2,405 $707 billion
11 United States Yale University 2,400 $777 billion
12 United States University of California, Berkeley 2,385 $760 billion
13 United Kingdom University of Oxford 2,290 $349 billion
14 United States Cornell University 2,245 $483 billion
15 United States University of Texas at Austin 2,195 $463 billion
16 United States Princeton University 2,180 $1,126 billion
17 United States University of Notre Dame 2,085 $179 billion
18 United States University of Miami 1,970 $691 billion
19 FranceSingaporeUnited Arab EmiratesUnited States INSEAD 1,965 $356 billion
20 United States University of California, Los Angeles 1,945
Equity therefore dictates that if I am to have an even chance to make it big, we also need to reduce and normalize the academic qualifications to get into these schools. It is simply not equitable for them to hoard the best students.
This economists’ promiscuity can be only cured with hard socialism. What is the value of an economist in a down to earth, near substance level lifestyle communist wannabe society? In the US. part of economists’ job is to be a priest who keeps peons brainwashed and down. In former USSR, peons such as assembly line workers, grocery store clerks and truck/taxi drivers were much better off financially then intellectual professions, especially militarily useless economists, both due to being designaed proletariat, actual value of real output in deficit society and direct access to scarce goods, services and materials that could be sold on the black market.
> I still can’t figure out why the Trump administration wants to fund the Racism League schools.
Apparently, the “Racism League” has been an important part of the success of the U.S. economic engine, making disproportionately outsized contributions compared to “lower-ranked” schools. Why throw the baby (money and prestige for the country derived from “leetism”) out with the bathwater (the racism and reverse discrimination)?
I’m sure no one cares, but I personally don’t agree. I’m not sure how strong this analogy is…however the “school ranking” and prestige thing reminds me of the employee review and rating crap we had to do at MegaCorp, Inc. when I was a wage slave. It really was just lazy shorthand, because the managers and leaders couldn’t be bothered to learn about what their employees were really contributing, and became a game of P.R. Seems like fund granters want the same shorthand.
The biggest contrubutions of ^racist league” to US economy since 1980th has been done by early drpoffs from there, be it Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Sergey Brin with Larry Page. The only graduate I can come up with, Zak. dealt massive blow to US economic productivity with his Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg is not a Harvard graduate.
Keep in mind that Donald Trump, George Bush (Jr. and Sr.), Obama all attended Ivies.
Zuck got the idea for Facebook from the original paper facebooks in the Ivy League and the girl rating club there.. Even though he dropped out he, took advantage of the networking opportunities at Harvard. I wish they sent us proofs of the admitted freshman before we had to make the decision. I would have gone to State U., with a bigger pool of hot girls. Zuck eventually got an honorary degree from Harvard. Marrying for money gets you women like Marjorie Merriweather Post, blech–you couldn’t pay me enough in mansions and yachts to go there.
Why do wealthy people fight tooth and nail and bend the rules to get their brats in to the Ivies+ (Stanford, MIT)? It’s a golden ticket. Steve’s data above seems about right, a large percentage of ultra high net worth people went to the Ivies+. Finbros and techbros are mined from those schools. It probably would be better to spread the money around, but that isn’t how it works.
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@Paulie right, people like Trump and Bush attended Ivys when they were already rich through family wealth. People like them, wealthy scions, should be subtracted from the Steve’s list, along with the wealthy dropouts. Donald Trump’s father graduated from Pratt Institute, a school in Brooklyn, NY, and he became wealthy nevertheless. Wealthy dropouts underscore uselessness of Ivy education per-se (t was so good that they did not need it?) and great usefulness of whom you know, kind of dynamic cast structure. For all I know they could be attending right country clubs instead, before they became EOE/DEI entities.
The only truly rich people who became so after Ivys I am aware about are some hedge fund managers, and probably the greatest Ivy’s contribution for them were to their rolodexes.