Harvard’s Crimson & clover
THE ivy-covered walls in Harvard Yard are turning into weeping willows in the wake of a whiny editorial in the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, titled, “The Urgency of the Present,” bemoaning the horrible returns of the school’s $36 billion endowment this year.
Yes, the privileged and the petulant have their Ivy tied in a knot.
It is a privilege to attend Harvard at an estimated tuition of $69,100 per year, and they are upset that their nonprofit university endowment lost $2 billion last year.
In fact, the smug, silver-spoon-spoiled students wrote: “Let’s not mince words: This is unacceptable.”
For starters, you need to understand that financially fragile psyche of the Crimson Crybabies. There is nothing they hate more than the blue and white Bulldogs of Yale. And Yale’s endowment once again pummeled Harvard’s.
The Crimson wrote, “In fiscal year 2015, Harvard ranked penultimate among Ivy League institutions, with Princeton besting Harvard Management Company by nearly seven points.”
Look, kids, I think it’s time to put on your grown-up pants.
At $35.7 billion, your college is the benefactor of one of the biggest tax scams in the civilized world. Stop whining.
Harvard’s donors get a full tax deduction for donating hundreds of millions of dollars every year to a school that already has the largest nonprofit university educational endowment in the world — one that is so large it could buy all of Deutsche Bank twice and still have change.
It appears the Crimson bellyaching worked, though. Harvard announced on Thursday night that N.P. Narvekar will become its new endowment head. He is, of course, from Columbia University, which has had a 10.1 percent annualized return over the past 10 years.
I just think, with this being an election year, perhaps the Harvard students should be focused on more important matters.