Aren't costs going up for everyone else anyway? Hot take: instead of hoping that rich alumni would donate to universities, the nation could tax these folks properly instead, and use that money make public education free/cheap.

There are quite a few countries in the world doing this, not all of them rich.

Or the universities could spend a bit less money. Most donations go to things that aren't exactly central to the supposed mission of a university, like football fields or $90 million dining halls [1]. The explosion of administrative staff over the last couple decades also doesn't help.

[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/blog/real-estate/2016/0...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/march-madness-is-a-moneymaker-m...

Look at the worth of theirs endowment funds at the end of 2021 :

  Harvard   53G$
  Yale      42G$
  Stanford  37.8G$
  Princeton 37G$
  MIT       27.4G$

All these unusual units are kinda fun, could spice up a presentation or conversation to throw in without context.

It gives me that hacker having fun, tarsnap picodollar/byte-month pricing vibe.

53G$ == $53B USD

I remember how during the pandemic there was a number of articles about how these schools might have to take out some small pittance of the endowment to fund certain things and the schools were all doom and gloom about it.

So no, endowments aren't spent, but the returns fund a lot of stuff.

Encouraging donation to top schools via legacy admission creates perverted incentives to concentrate resources at a few top schools, creating the cycle of everyone fighting to get into them. Money and resources should be spread out.

You still have a strong incentive for folks who want to show gratitude to their alma mater, and at the same time help improve access and equity to everyone else.

I think that's a joke of an argument. The people whose kids would no longer get in would go somewhere and the distribution of their bribery would surely be more democratizing.

LOL they don't need any more donations.