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Subject: Endowment Tax Bills, Best Venue for Ivy Madness Author: An Observer [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 10:49:19 12/11/25 Thu In reply to: Son of Eli 's message, "Potential Ivy League Basketball Tournament Venue" on 17:00:51 12/10/25 Wed The federal government has declared war on America's most well known universities. Next year, Harvard will pay roughly $370 million (plus or minus $25 mm) to the IRS in taxes on its endowment. Yale will pay about $300 million and Princeton will pay in the neighborhood of $220 million. (The sliding scale actually hits Princeton the hardest because the tax is based upon endowment per student, where the Tigers are about 50% richer than anybody else.) $220-370 million is the annual budget for a mid-size liberal arts college and we're going to be paying that amount in tax alone. We're not going to be renting the Mass Mutual Center. So I'll mention the idea I've floated many times before, the FREE option: Stabler Arena at Lehigh. We offer the Patriot League the crown jewel of collegiate basketball in the Boston-to-DC Acela corridor, the Palestra, in return for free use of Stabler. Problem solved for both conferences. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[> [> Subject: Re: Endowment Tax Bills, Best Venue for Ivy Madness Author: DeepBlue [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 14:23:03 12/11/25 Thu It's not impossible that Princeton avoids the endowment tax, because it only applies to schools with more than 3,000 tuition-paying students and Princeton's recent expansion of financial aid may cause them to fall below that number - a benefit of being small relative to the other members of their very-rich peer group: https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025/12/princeton-data-2029-frosh-survey-blog-financial-aid-tuition-tax-endowment

[> [> [> Subject: Re: Endowment Tax Bills, Best Venue for Ivy Madness FREE TUITION Author: An Observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 15:46:54 12/11/25 Thu DeepBlue, your point is fascinating. Think about the numbers here: Princeton could theoretically avoid paying $220 million in federal endowment tax if it can get the number of tuition-paying students down below 3,000. Like many of the Ivies, I believe that Princeton already offers free tuition, room and board to students whose familes make less than, say, $150,000 ballpark. It's free tuition only for families which earn less than $250,000. Let's just assume that Princeton currently has 3,500 students who currently pay something -- even one dollar -- for their tuition bill. It is **JUST AS CHEAP** for Princeton University to offer free full tuition to all 3,500 of those students (3,500 times $65,000 = $227.5 million) than it is to pay $220 million in endowment tax. Given that some of those 3,500 students already pay something toward their tuition, it will be far less than $227.5 million for Princeton to charge $0 in tuition. Logically, tuition at Princeton in 2026 should be $0.

[> [> [> [> Subject: Fascinating Author: sparman [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 16:25:57 12/11/25 Thu Someone else can research the legislative history behind this particular limitation. Then again, the administration that implemented this legislation did not demonstrate elite legal skills. I hope it was not an ivy league grad who drafted it.

[> [> Subject: Re: Endowment Tax Bills, Best Venue for Ivy Madness Author: DeepBlue [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 12:16:47 12/12/25 Fri If I were the Princeton board of trustees, I’d be thinking hard about what to do here, because it wouldn’t be ideal from their point of view to abolish tuition and then have the next administration repeal or modify the endowment tax such that abolishing tuition to avoid it would no longer be necessary. Saying “OK, that was fun, we’re going to start charging tuition again” wouldn’t be a great look…

[> [> [> Subject: Why Ivy League Alumni Donation Rates Are Plummeting Author: An Observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 13:32:20 12/12/25 Fri I've posted on this board here many times that I think Ivy League students pay too little in tuition. That's right, too little. It's no secret that alumni donation rates are plummeting across all eight Ivy League schools. Even the two outliers to the upside, Princeton and Dartmouth, are not immune. I've had conversations with administrators who, when pushed, will admit that all of the decline is from the younger classes. In other words, we old folks are still reaching into our wallets every year. But the graduates of the last decade or so do not. It's not because young people don't make as much money as old people, which of course is true. The comparison here is young graduates in 2025 comped against young grads in 2015 and 2005. Young folks comped against other folks back when the latter were also young. Young versus young. I submit human nature is such that, when you get something for absolutely free, you value it less. That's true whether it's the little bottle of booze they give you in first class or your $400,000 Ivy League education. When you get it for free, it's less valuable to you. About a third of our current graduates are getting their Ivy educations for free. Another third are paying very very little. Well, it's no surprise to me that young graduates don't feel grateful for their four years on campus. So I think abolishing tuition is a terrible idea, at Princeton and anywhere else. Having said that, I would love to see the richest university in America pay zero endowment tax because of how the statute was written. What a great loophole.