Ivy League

It's looks like the Democrat nominee is Hillary Clinton and it's an absolute slam dunk that she will spend most of her time talking about class warfare issues. After all, the last thing Ms. Clinton wants to discuss are her "accomplishments" at the state department, her honesty, her ethics, and her email server.

Driven Left by Bernie Sanders and the Democrat base, Hillary will tell us all about the scourge of "income inequality" and the selfishness of "millionaires and billionaires who don't pay their fair share."

Glen Reynolds of Instapundit writes the following in USA Today:

The problem of “inequality” looms over America like a storm cloud. According to our political and journalistic class, inequality is the single biggest problem facing our nation, with the possible exception of climate change. It is a desperate problem demanding sweeping solutions. President Obama calls it the "defining challenge of our time." Hillary Clinton says we’re living in a throwback to the elitist age of "robber barons.” Bernie Sanders says inequality is the result of a "rigged economy” that favors those at the top while holding down those at the bottom.

In that spirit, I have a modest proposal: Abolish the Ivy League. Because if you’re worried about inequality among Americans, I can think of no single institution that does more to contribute to the problem.

Faculty at Ivy league universities is overwhelmingly (try 90+ percent) progressive, and it's always fun turn the narrative against those who would otherwise support it—until it affects them directly.

Reynolds quotes progressive economist, Robert Reich, who wrote: “Imagine a system of college education supported by high and growing government spending on elite private universities that mainly educate children of the wealthy and upper-middle class, ..." He then goes on to note that at Princeton, with an endowment of $18.2 billion, the government subsidy averages $54,000 per student!

In the name of abolishing income inequality, Reynolds offers the following suggestions:

We should eliminate the tax deductibility of contributions to schools having endowments in excess of $1 billion. At some point, as our president has said, you’ve made enough money. That won’t end all major donations to the Ivy League, but it will doubtless encourage donors to look at less wealthy and more deserving schools, such as Northern Kentucky University, recently deemed "more inspirational than Harvard” in the London Times Higher Education magazine.

We should eliminate the tax deductibility of contributions to schools having endowments in excess of $1 billion. At some point, as our president has said, you’ve made enough money. That won’t end all major donations to the Ivy League, but it will doubtless encourage donors to look at less wealthy and more deserving schools, such as Northern Kentucky University, recently deemed "more inspirational than Harvard” in the London Times Higher Education magazine.

We should require that all schools with endowments over $1 billion spend at least 10% of their endowment annually on student financial aid. That will make it easier for less wealthy students to attend elite institutions.

We should require that university admissions be based strictly on objective criteria such as grades and SAT/ACT scores, with random drawings used to cull the herd further if necessary. That will eliminate the Ivy League’s documented discrimination against Asians.

Hmmm. I wonder whether Yale-educated Hillary Clinton would embrace Reynold's ideas. After all, the Ivys just don't pay their fair share.