and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

It's not that I haven't been trying - honestly, I have - but there hasn't been anything too interesting that has caught my eye lately worth writing about. Everyday I trawl the internet for things to comment on, spark debate, and create a conversation. Inevitably that devolves into youtube links. I don't really think any of you want that, but maybe I am wrong. It's been known to happen.

So today I must dig into my email, where an interesting conversation went on today about the Harvard tuition news late last year. I pointed out that:

They overhauled their tuition back in December (a trend I am seeing of late) such that they will not expect any more than ~10% of a families income per annum if they make less than $180,000 - so, no more than $10,000 for a family making $100,000 which is, in my book, pretty damn fair, all things considered.

Nevertheless, with a $35 BILLION DOLLAR endowment (largest in the land, of course) they can certainly afford to do this. In fact, based on Microsoft's recent offer, they could basically go out and buy Yahoo tomorrow and be A-OK with their creditors. Based on their undergrad student count of ~6800 and a tuition of $35k for the 07-08 year, they could invest their 35 bill in a modest money market fund, pay for ALL 6800 students, and still have money left over!

Sometime in the late 90s I remember hearing about their amazingly large endowment of $625 million.. that was about 10 years ago. Someone did them some good investing.

My friend TBone chimed in with this response:

Harvard has an endowment bigger than Ireland's GDP. Harvard, with a all its undergrad students (most of whom do not work, and many of whom have never worked a day in their lives), take in more money than the 4,109,806 Irish, including the St. James Gate brewery.

This seemingly magnanimous act of generosity on the part of Harvard becomes less-so when you consider that Congress has been putting the screws to the likes of the NCAA and some of the Ivies with respect to their non-profit status. Their endowment is of course, untaxed, and is therefore in a real sense, a gift from the American taxpayer, so they are obligated by law to spend at least 10% of the total every year, which they have not been doing for decades now. It's BS if you ask me, they should be tuition-free.

No wonder they're doing so well.