Yale Ups Endowment Spending

Big scholarships could siphon top students who couldn't afford Harvard

(NEWSER) - It’s easy to applaud the generosity the Ivy League is lavishing on the middle class, but it could have unintended consequences, Newsweek notes. Second-tier schools and elite public universities rely on the highly talented middle-class kids Harvard and company are targeting. “Schools compete hard for those students,” said Colgate’s VP of finances. But Colgate’s $700 million can’t compete with Harvard’s $34 billion war chest. More»

*And pre-empts legislation far costlier for superrich schools

(NEWSER) - Generosity isn't what's fueling Harvard’s new $22 million giveaway to the middle class—it’s greed, educational consultant Steven Roy Goodman writes in the Boston Globe. Harvard’s giving the extra financial aid as a PR move, hoping to squash brewing legislation that would force universities to spend 5% of their endowments each year. Because Harvard has $35 billion squirreled away, that would amount to $1.75 billion. More»

It will open liberal arts school within national university

(NEWSER) - Yale plans to open a liberal arts college in Singapore, and has bigger plans of reshaping higher education in Asia. Yale-NUS—it's a partnership with the government-run National University of Singapore—is planned as a highly selective college that would draw talented students from all over Asia, where liberal arts programs remain rare. Yale would hire 100 professors to teach a planned student body of 1,000, the New York Times reports. More»

Enough already with Harvard and Yale: blogger

(NEWSER) - The Supreme Court and White House may as well be decorated in ivy, complains David Bernstein. "Once Elena Kagan gets confirmed, every Supreme Court Justice will have attended Harvard or Yale law schools," he writes. And Kagan—whose bachelor's degree, for the record, is from Princeton—was nominated by a Harvard-educated president who beat Yale and Harvard opponents to succeed a Yalie who himself succeeded ... oh, you get the picture. More»

(NEWSER) - Reasoned debate is all well and good, but the more than 300 amendments offered to the health care reform bill by finance committee Republicans are “dangerously close to a parody,” Dana Milbank writes. Or maybe they’re already there. Take Orrin Hatch’s request for “transition relief for the excise tax on high-cost insurance plans for any state with a name that begins with the letter 'U.'” There’s only one state that starts with ‘U:’ Hatch’s Utah. More»