The moral bankruptcy of Ivy League America
&gt; &quot;<i>The genuinely radical Ivy League option — spending their vast endowments to sharply increase student numbers — is unlikely to be entertained.</i>&quot;<p>This is often said but doesn&#x27;t seem to be realistic if one digs into the numbers.<p>Endowments aren&#x27;t one big slush fund that the university can use however they want; they are a collection of individual donations, many of which can only be used in accordance with the donor&#x27;s wishes.  These are called restricted endowments. 
 Harvard is cited as having the largest total endowment and their latest financial report (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;finance.harvard.edu&#x2F;files&#x2F;fad&#x2F;files&#x2F;fy22_harvard_financial_report.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;finance.harvard.edu&#x2F;files&#x2F;fad&#x2F;files&#x2F;fy22_harvard_fin...</a>) on page 12 shows that 70% of their total endowment are restricted endowments with 20% of the total already composed of restricted endowments that are specifically for financial aid.  In theory, the 30% of the total endowment that is unrestricted could be redirected to financial aid, increasing the amount of financial aid by 1.5x from endowment revenue only (the overall increase would be much less than 1.5x since financial aid comes from other sources as well) but it&#x27;s unclear what other impact that would have on university operations.<p>tl;dr 1) universities are already using some of their endowments to help students, 2) there are legal limitations on how much more of their endowments they can use to help students even if practical considerations are ignored, 3) if they did so, it wouldn&#x27;t be enough to &quot;sharply&quot; increase student numbers, and 4) people should really dig into things instead of repeating hot takes from internet pundits at face value.