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As outlined in Why did CJ Roberts apply the Fourteenth Amendment to Harvard, a private school?, the affirmative action only applies to schools that receive federal funding. But the federal funds seem like a drop in the bucket for Harvard:

With a $40.9 Billion Endowment, Harvard Gets $22 Million in Federal Work Study Funding. Harvard received $22.2 million from 2016 until present from the U.S. Department of Education's Federal Work Study Program.

So... why not just refuse future federal funding and continue to run your admissions program as you please? Is there a political reason for not doing so?

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    Its not clear from the linked article if the 22 million is the only government funding. I expect it is not, and there are other, larger public grants to the university. For example NSF funding for scientists at Harvard etc.
    – James K
    Commented Jul 4, 2023 at 0:07
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    This might be better-suited on Academia SE.
    – Allure
    Commented Jul 4, 2023 at 3:34
  • The linked article is wrong in multiple ways. (1) The primary goal of an endowment is to have it grow to keep track of inflation (or better). This requires rather judicious withdrawals from the endowment. Typical endowment withdrawal rates at Harvard and at many other schools with a nice endowment are in the 3 to 4 percent range. (2) That small $22 million program is but a fraction of the monies Harvard receives from the federal government. The US federal government getting into an educational institution in any manner enables the government to have some say in the institution's policies.
    – David Hammen
    Commented Jul 7, 2023 at 11:15
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    @DavidHammen yeah, the Left now finally understands why the government should not be involved in education and let the free market decide everything.
    – JonathanReez
    Commented Jul 7, 2023 at 14:31

2 Answers 2

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Because Harvard receives much more than $22 million

In 2021, Harvard University’s federal funding increased to $625 million. [...] An example of the kind of funding Harvard University received in 2021 is a $2.8 million award from the National Science Foundation to help minority youth pursue STEM careers. USA Facts highlights that, in 2018, Harvard University gained the most significant federal grants of any US college. In 2017, the college had the ninth-highest research and development funding. (source)

The $40.9 billion is capital, not revenue.

Harvard University revenue is $810 million (source) $5.8 billion in total operating revenue (source - see comment below)

So a significant of its revenue is public funds. To maintain its position as an elite institution it depends on public funding.

The $22 million is one small aspect of public funds, to subsidise employment of university students. It doesn't include research grants, which are the main part of public funding.

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    I don't know where zippia.com came up with that $810 million. Harvard itself reported $5.8 billion in total operating revenue for fiscal year 2022, which ended on June 30, 2022. Of that amount, 36% came from its huge endowment (and another 9% from other gifts) and only 11% from federally-sponsored research.
    – David Hammen
    Commented Jul 7, 2023 at 11:25
  • Well I don't know. I'm just reporting the figures I found. Anyway, you'll agree that federal funding is more than 22 million, and is not something that Harvard could simply turn its back on.
    – James K
    Commented Jul 7, 2023 at 18:34
  • Why don't you just change your answer to use David Hammen's data and source?
    – user44908
    Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 6:26
  • Zippia is clearly spouting nonsense. "Based in Cambridge, MA, Harvard University is an industry leader with 26,730 employees and an annual revenue of $810.0M." zippia.com/harvard-university-careers-1214498 So if they have a student to employee ratio of, say, 20:1, then they have 134k students. 810M/26.7k = 30k, but: "The average employee at Harvard University makes $62,600". Wikipedia says they have an enrollment of 31k. (810M-625M)/31k = 6k. Does the average Harvard student pay $6k in tuition? And less than $200M on a $41B endowment? That's an ROI of half a percent.
    – Acccumulation
    Commented Jul 11, 2023 at 2:00
  • Sorry, that should be "So if they have a student to employee ratio of, say, 5:1".
    – Acccumulation
    Commented Jul 11, 2023 at 12:48
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That $22 million is just a small part of federal funds that go to Harvard. While students are the debtors for student loans, the universities are the recipients of the money, and so this brings them under the jurisdiction of the federal government if the loans are federal loans, so Harvard would have to refuse any student getting a federal student loan. This would hardly advance their diversity goal (being able to afford college without student loans is kinda correlated with being white). Research grants, grad student and post-doc funding, etc. also have significant contributions from the federal government. The federal government is extremely integrated with academia, and a university trying to extricate itself from that would be a daunting prospect.

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