The Big, Beautiful Bill Targets Massive University Endowments

President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” passed by the House Thursday contains numerous, needed policy changes, including something that should have happened ages ago: taxes on large, private university endowments. 

Many universities have been engaging in numerous assaults on America’s social fabric, including targeting and unfairly gaslighting conservative students, professors, and would-be professors. They’ve also price gouged students with rising tuition that far exceeds overall inflation in the past quarter century. 

In short, these universities are harming, rather than serving the public interest. As U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Republicans described it, the Big, Beautiful Bill “[h]olds woke, elite universities that operate more like major corporations and other tax-exempt entities accountable, ensuring they can no longer abuse generous benefits provided through the tax code.”

Most Americans don’t have the privilege of graduating from college. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2022  that just 37.7% of Americans held a bachelor’s degree or higher.

College graduates generally earn more money than non-graduates, so essentially working-class, lower-income people subsidize wealthier, educated people through the tax code. Now it’s time to turn the tables.

My Independent Women’s Forum colleague Inez Feltscher Stepman put it well:

The student debt crisis is a burden on millions of Americans. But a bailout on the backs of taxpayers who didn’t go to college is regressive and unfair. Instead, we should send the bill for exploding loan debt where it belongs: with universities that have gotten rich and powerful by overcharging both their students and taxpayers.

If passed by the U.S. Senate and signed by Trump, the bill would increase the university endowment tax and subject the largest endowments to the corporate tax rate. It increases the tax on massive non-profits that resemble hedge funds and pay their employees huge salaries.

The rate would rise to 21% for university endowments of at least $2 million per student. Net investment income taxes would increase on some foundations, but only with a top rate of 10% for those with assets of $5 billion or more. 

Public universities, which are directly funded by state taxpayers, would be shielded, as would some religious organizations and institutions of higher learning following certain stipulations. One criterion includes a founding after July 4, 1776. That means only one of the eight Ivy League institutions (Cornell) is young enough to qualify.  

I’m a Harvard grad so this is personal. I have fond memories of my time at Harvard and am grateful for the experience, although there were times that I felt conservatives were not welcome and it was not an intellectually open learning environment.  

Journalist Christopher Rufo recently exposed how Harvard was overtly discriminating against white men in its hiring process, reportedly directing hiring managers to prioritize racial minorities and women. Harvard tried to backpedal in response, Rufo reported. 

In response to the Trump administration’s recent actions toward reforming Harvard, university president Alan Garber emailed all alumni asking for donations. Yet Harvard is not suffering. Harvard is by far the richest college in America and has an endowment of $53.2 billion, bigger than the gross domestic product of most countries. 

Harvard University’s top six endowment investment officials earned a combined $26 million in 2023, according to a Harvard report filed this month. Harvard could provide free tuition to all students from modest backgrounds for many years, perhaps even in perpetuity.

Harvard is just one of many universities that have become hotbeds of discrimination and intellectual suppression. It’s time to fight back, and I applaud Congress and the White House for stemming the tide of Marxist indoctrination, subsidized by American taxpayers.

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