Does Harvard Exercise Scarcity Power?

If asked the question about my views on Harvard university, I would state that it is not only an impressive academy with a strong faculty throughout various disciplines but also that it appears to want to win the race of accumulation. An alumni of Harvard University writes in the NYT and debates with herself about the Alma mater's large and growing endowment fund.

Granted that the university's main administrators have probably considered that keeping the endowment growing is important to ensure that the institution is assured of future survival, I find that the author makes a lot of sense in questioning the policy regarding the endowment in addition to the sustained fund raising effort. While it would be completely absurd to consider the endowment as a slash fund to be spent in its entirety, it is clear that she thinks that there is a serious disconnect between the investment policy and the expenditure of that money. As it currently stands, it appears that the exemptions granted to the endowment funds run by US universities merely ensure that college presidents bear the clout that goes with the size of the fund in addition to providing its fund managers with hefty income. I do not think that the requirement that foundations spend a prescribed proportion of their funds is just and so would argue that they be freed of this requirement as opposed to introducing the same strictures to endowment funds run by colleges.

Carroll Bogert answers herself about the reason that her colleagues continue to send cash gifts to the school. The very rational reason is that they all expect that their offspring would want to study at Harvard and daddy's prior contribution may be a deciding factor in a close decision for a highly desired place. While the author wonders whether the critical thinking taught to her colleagues is suspended in the matter of contributions to the school, it is palpable that they have retained the ability to see a little further into the future and to understand that the university could exercise market power over the admissions. On the whole, it is far better to see its alumni begin to question the logic of accumulation as that is a debate that Harvard's administrators should have with its hyper-literate alumni and benefactors.