Despite its estimated $53 billion endowment, Harvard University faces an uphill climb to make up for the billions in Trump-administration ordered cuts.
The Hill reported that what seems like an easy fix to the university’s financial shortfall is a lot harder than might appear at first glance. The report says as much as 80% of the Harvard endowment funds are earmarked for specific purposes that are aside from regular expenses or were donated for clearly defined uses like research.
Sandy Baum with the Urban Institute told The Hill, “It’s not like a bank account.” The spending designations, she said, limit how and where the money can be used. “The idea is that you’ll have it sort of forever so that you can take income from it and fund some activity, but you could do that forever.” Being told to just pay bills with it, she said, is not how things work. “So not just for students today, but for students in the future.”
The Trump administration has suggested that Harvard dive into its endowment accounts to make up for the money the White House and Education Department are blocking from the university.
In early May, Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote to Harvard President Alan Garber and presented a scathing rebuke of Harvard’s activities while getting billions annually from the government. “Harvard University has made a mockery of this country’s higher education system,” she said. “It has invited foreign students who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America to its campus in every way.”
McMahon pointed to Harvard’s endowment funding while saying that receiving government funding is a “privilege, not a right.”
Harvard has fought back against the administration’s funding cuts with lawsuits, but with limited success. While some doors to Harvard’s endowment accounts might be willing to reassign how their donations are used. Many have died after making their directed donations, and the process to get access for general use would require significant legal maneuvering, according to The Hill.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
