Dear Friends,
It seems to me that since colleges and universities are the biggest proponents of distributive justice, it is only fair that they get to take part in the grand experiment, that they want the rest of us to participate in. Using the distributive justice model, we can clearly see, that the way college endowments are distributed is unjust. So the best means of rectifying this injustice, (according to these very institutions), is for government to seize from the rich colleges and universities then redistribute the money to poorer colleges and universities.
There are over fifteen intuitions of higher learning in the US that have more than a Billion dollars in their endowments. These happen to be the universities that have the biggest turn down rates and highest tuition. These huge endowments distort the ability of people to get quality college educations.
When a very few elite and select universities have far more money than they need, while others have far less than they need to run a quality curriculum, then we have a system set up to discriminate. Let’s look at the difference between the haves and the have nots in collages. Harvard University has over a billion dollars in it’s endowment. Some State collages have no endowments at all. So we can say the gap between the rich and the poor collages is a billion to one. When you have a gap between rich and poor collages that big it sets up a fundamentally discriminatory educational system.
Tuitions in American collages have been rising at over double the rate of inflation. The reason is that collages and universities are inelastic at increasing supply. But the demand rises every year. Despite the government’s increasing taxes and subsidies to collages and universities, the tuition rate, as measured in today’s dollars, is far less affordable than it was ten years ago. That affordability gap has been increasing every year due to the inelasticity of supply to meet increasing demand.
Redistributing these endowments would give colleges and universities incentives to increase supply. Poorer colleges, (that provide most of the growth in enrollment), would get the most benefit. This redistribution of funds would allow poor universities and colleges to expand their curriculums and enrolments. If this causes the supply of openings to go up the rate of growth in tuitions would be slowed or even reversed.
The endowments would be taxed on a progressive scale. The richest universities and colleges would have the most money taken from their endowments and the poorest colleges and universities would get most redistributed wealth. Like the income tax system this would level the playing field for colleges and universities.
The gap between the rich and the poor universities and colleges screams for a more equitable cutting up of the endowment pie. Lets let some of the little guys get a piece of the pie. Lets not let some fat cat universities and colleges suck up all the money. These greedy fat cats should give up some of what they don’t need or use. So that others may simply live.
Most college and university professors are big proponents of distributive justice. They argue that people with more should be taxed more and the money redistributed to make up for systematic and structural deficiencies. These manifest themselves as racism, sexism and all the other ism’s that appear in society. They also manifest themselves as unequal access to goods and services as well as unequal access to education. The educational piece of the puzzle can be solved by applying distributive justice, (as those that run our universities and collages argue should be applied to us).
As I would be happy to have my proscriptions applied to me, (life, liberty, right to property and to be recognized by government as a end in and of myself) I am certain that Colleges and universities would like to be treated as they propose others be treated. (To believe otherwise is to be a hypocrite). They will all be glad to have their proscriptions used on them, and see first hand… the results.
