The Woke Hedge Fund University Dumpster Fire

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It’s about five years ago, I did a piece entitled Hedge Fund University. And basically, over the years, I’ve talked extensively here on the podcast and on the radio show about financing college education. And you know how it’s, I couldn’t fathom, I don’t understand why anybody would allow their kids to put themselves, you know, tens of thousands, six figures into debt.

for an undergraduate degree, then exacerbating it with a graduate degree after that. I mean, it’s insanity to me. It really is. To me, I can’t get arms around. Imagine being six figures in debt, 21 years old. Anyway, piece I wrote, Hedge Fund University, and talking about the amount of money that was being spent at these schools and where the money was going and the cost of.

tuition and fees and where it was going and the amount of money that was being spent on Professors versus support staff and building maintenance and student services. I mean it was absolutely insane since 1980 the number of administrators per student at colleges has doubled has doubled and again, you know the

Demographic breakdown on data with people holding student debt and the macroeconomic ramifications. Again, I’ve talked a lot about this. I have. And again, a lot of it’s an ego thing.

Straight up, a lot of it is an ego thing, where parents, you know, your kids, they work their butts off, they get into a really great school, and parents feel the need that they have to, you know, have to find a way to get their kids there. Oftentimes part of that deal is student loans. Student loans because they went to this fancy school. Malcolm Gladwell, one of his books, I forget which one he talked.

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about this and how, you know, there’s no point. I mean, chemistry in a laboratory is the same at a state school as it is at an Ivy League school. It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference. Why are you spending that much more? And I’ve advised kids over the years saying, listen, yeah, I know you got into this great private school, but this is what you want to be.

You want to be an engineer. You want to be a doctor. Well, you know what? You might want to save some bucks and not put yourself into debt because you might want to go to grad school, devote some of that money that you saved towards that. That’s all that matters. All that matters is getting a job, getting a job in the end, getting out and being able to take that degree and doing something with it productive. Now again, I love

the humanities. I love all of these things, philosophy, history, all of that. And that’s all well and good. But at what price? At what price? You know how much how many books you could buy with the amount of money that you’re spending at a private education to get that? You could self teach yourself a lot of the things, not to mention the fact you could take classes online from some of these fancy schools for free.

Again, you’re gonna spend the money. I understand the experience and everything goes along with that, but let’s put this in a proper perspective. And now we’ve got a mess. A mess that’s taken place. It’s being, the light is being shined on these places, finally to a greater degree in regards to the culture that’s taking place on campus. Again, we’ve talked about this for a while. Everybody kind of knows this was taking place. Nothing was being done.

about it. But when you lose Fareed Zakaria, CNN, you’re losing him on this one. I mean, I got to quote what he had to say. He said, when one thinks of America’s greatest strengths, the kind of assets the world looks at with admiration and envy, America’s elite universities would have long have been at the top of the list. But the American public has been losing faith in these universities for good reason. And again, he

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went after the various different university presidents and their vague and indecisive answers. And he’s basically said, elite universities have gone from being centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas. And those agendas what? Diversity, inclusion. It’s become dogmatic ideology.

And these universities are now where it’s basically political and social engineering is there. It’s not about any sort of academic merit or debate. Now, again, I always bring my situation into the fold. Again, my kids, all three of them were playing college athletics. So we went through the recruiting process and speaking with.

the various different schools that were recruiting us and speaking to the coaches and the academic advisors and some of the choices that we made were based upon the fact that I’m not sending my kid to any sort of woke nonsense. It’s not gonna happen. And not to mention the fact I still keep an eye on everything that they’re taking and studying and what they are learning there. Because again, I’ve said it, your kids need you more at that point in your life.

than I think that they do when they’re younger, by any stretch of the imagination. There’s a lot more that’s being thrown at them at a very short period of time when they’re first on their own. But anyway, as the carrier goes on, he said in the humanities, hiring for new academic positions now appears to center on the race and gender of the applicant, as well as the subject matter, which needs to be about marginalized groups. A white man studying the American presidency does not have a prayer.

of getting tenure at a major university department in America today, it’s true. No shot. New subjects crop up that are basically political agendas. They’re not academic fields. Out of this culture of diversity has grown the collection of ideas and practices that we have now all heard of. Safe spaces, trigger words, trigger warnings, microaggressions.

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And you get these schools that put in speech codes that make it a violation of university rules to say things that some groups might find offensive. Universities advise students not to speak, act, even dress in ways that might cause offense to some minority groups. When the George Floyd protests erupted, universities publicly aligned their institutions to those protests. In this context, it is understandable that Jewish groups would wonder.

Why do safe spaces, microaggressions, and hate speech not apply to us? If universities can take positions against free speech to make some groups feel safe, why not us? Having coddled so many student groups for so long, university administrators found themselves squirming, unable to explain while certain groups, Jews and Asians, don’t seem to count in the conversation. And he goes on. But he’s right. And getting back.

to my piece from five years ago, Hedge Fund University. You had Alyssa Finley in the Wall Street Journal basically echo what I’ve been saying. It is, they’re hedge funds, they’re businesses. Just really realize that it’s called the Harvard Corporation. And they actually brag that they are the oldest corporation in the Western hemisphere.

They operate like for-profit businesses. They all have nonprofit status, but they don’t operate that way. And the interesting thing about the Harvard Corporation, they don’t have shareholders. They got 13 people, including the president, and they self-select. You wanna talk about power? These 13 people control a $50 billion endowment. I made fun of this last week.

I think one of my money minutes talking about how you had a veto. One was Ron Wyden, the Senate. Yeah, no, can’t tax these universities. Can’t tax these billionaires, the only billionaires. They’ve never wanted a tax, I think.

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Columbia and New York City, I thought it was a Catholic church. I was wrong. New York City’s largest private landowner. 320 properties valued at nearly $4 billion. It doesn’t have to pay property tax on that. Saves $182 million annually. Harvard avoids paying $50 million in property taxes.

Gandis, what allows them to provide low cost housing to faculty? Ever see some of these brownstones in some of these areas where these faculty live? Woo! Yep. Ivy League endowments, yep. Harvard, $50.7 billion. Yale, $40.7 billion. Princeton, $34.1 billion. Penn, $21 billion. And again, you take a look at those valuations. They exceed most publicly traded corporations.

Imagine if they had to pay taxes on those endowments like everybody else has to. Again, they exercise, they run their business the way they want to run their business. They avoid most taxes. They gouge customers. I mean, again, you would think leftists would hate this stuff. This is the stuff that Elizabeth Warren goes after business for all the time. But these corporations, these colleges,

These hedge fund universities do.

Am I wrong? Are you taking a look at these numbers here? Not to mention the fact they use cheap labor. Yeah, yeah, you get the old grad students teaching classes there. Keep, you know, professors, you know, God forbid, they actually have to, you know, teach class and grade papers from time to time. And it was interesting, and Alyssa Finley points this out, that it’s no surprise that the grad students have spearheaded.

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the anti-Israel protests at many colleges. It was a Harvard grad student was captured on video accosting an Israeli student. After Harvard removed him from his position as a residential proctor for undergrads, it’s graduate student union. That’s right, they have a graduate union. It’s a part of, I’m not making this up, it’s a part of the United Auto Workers, I kid you not. I kid you not. And I was.

They asked about this years ago. They said, Chris, you want to teach a class at college over here? If I did it, I’d have to become a member of the United Auto Workers to do so. Anyway, yeah. Yeah, and the union pushed back because they went after that grad student and said that Harvard is actively punishing and evicting Black, Palestinian, and Muslim students, which obviously was not the case. Again, they don’t want to.

tick off their grad students because then again, it would have to compel faculty out there to actually teach sections and grade papers. Better to keep the grad students happy. Yeah, you’ve had some pressure, University of Pennsylvania with, was it the Stone Ridge Asset Management pulling their funding and then led to the president being removed, but again.

These are all powerful entities and they are part of the watchdog on Wall Street, Axis of Evil, big business politicians in the mainstream media. They are a part of the big club. The big club that you’re not invited into you’re not a part of by any stretch the imagination. It’s a landing place for many politicians when they leave office. I mean for crying out loud. The Biden Center at the UPenn.

He actually said he was a professor there. He never taught a class for crying out loud, but he got paid. He got paid. Again, it’s how the grift works. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.