Published at The National Desk

WASHINGTON (TND) — Sixty-five billion dollars, that's how much our country's wealthiest universities gained just with endowments in the most recent five-year review period. 

In fact, Harvard raked in the most dough with an endowment that now stands at $50.9 billion. That's an $11.7 billion increase in just five years. Yale grew from $11.3 billion to $40.7 and Stanford went from $26.5 billion to $36.5 billion from 2018 to 2022. These schools are also all recipients of federal funds from you, the American taxpayer, and at least five actually accepted pandemic bailouts during this same time period. 

CEO of Open the Books Adam Andrzejewski joined The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat to break down the numbers.

"Who knew that the Ivy League and other wealthy universities were taxing you? [There were] $33 billion in the five-year period to 10 of these elite schools, the Ivy League plus Stanford and Northwestern," Andrzejewski said. "That number on federal contracts and grants at $33 billion exceeded the amount that they collected on undergraduate student tuition and on top of that you got $12 billion that they effectively received because they don't have to pay taxes on their massive gains on their endowments. Since 2017, the Ivy League schools have to pay 1.4% on their gains, whereas if you do well in America, you pay a top rate of 20% on your capital gains." 

Andrzejewski also discussed the frivolous grants from federal agencies that universities may be receiving. 

"There are $2 million going to Stanford to study high college kids and the retail marijuana environment," he explained. "You got $2 million going to the University of Pennsylvania to preserve minority history. In northern Iraq, you got $3 million of US taxpayer money going to Stanford to study the sex hormone effects on transgender adolescents, you got $4 million going to Cornell to hire minoritized, their words, faculty in the sciences. I got a good idea to save $4 million stop discriminating and higher on merit."