STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

June 8, 2026

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Creative Destruction Comes for the Ivory Tower

 

Even at top schools, leaders must cut needless costs

 

Excerpts:

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“A massive financial crunch has hit many schools because of sagging tuition revenue growth -- reflecting falling enrollment or more aggressive discounting of tuition fees -- and reduced public financial support in the form of federal and/or state aid and stagnant private philanthropy, all occurring in an environment of heightened inflationary pressures increasing the dollars needed to operate....

 

“Colleges and universities in America typically have high fixed costs. Every time a school confers tenure on a faculty member, for example, it incurs a financial liability measured typically in the millions of dollars -- the present value of a lifetime of salary and fringe benefit payments. Moreover, a typical large university has debt obligations often reaching several hundred million dollars. Unlike in, say, Europe, American schools typically feel obliged to feed and house their students rather than leave that to entrepreneurs who specialize in those tasks. Moreover, they typically borrow heavily to finance increasingly luxurious dorms and student recreational facilities.

 

“The cost pressures of colleges have been aggravated by massive administrative bloat; universities are supposed to focus on the production and distribution of ideas: knowledge. Yet many administrative personnel on campuses do other things that often detract from Job One. This is doubly true when universities finance anti-merit-based evaluation of academic success through such things as ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives. 

  

[Followed by discussion of the various forces at work, and especially incentives and ownership, followed by suggestions for possible solutions:]

 

“One, adopt year-round schooling so students can get a bachelor’s degree in less than three years. Two, abolish tenure for new faculty and incentivize some faculty to retire early. Three, eliminate governmental support for colleges and universities with more administrative staff than teaching faculty, forcing non-teaching staffing reductions. Four, increase teaching loads, usually to at least three classes. Fifth, end tax incentives to support ball-throwing contests -- intercollegiate athletics -- such as deductions for stadium luxury suites or indoor practice facilities. Six, require minimal academic performance if federal financial assistance is to be granted to students.”

 

Full op-ed by Ohio U Prof. Emeritus Richard Vedder at Minding the Campus and as original published at James Martin Center.

See also “The Growth of Managerial Staff at Stanford” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including detailed charts that show among other things that Stanford has the highest administrative cost per student of any U.S. university and also has more business and finance administrative staff than schools that have double and even triple the student enrollment compared to Stanford.

 

The Reality Test -- How AI Could Help Humanity Challenge Everything It Thinks It Knows

 

Excerpts (links in original):

. . . . 

“Long before I became a First Amendment lawyer, I was fascinated by the history of scientific censorship. The stories of Galileo, Darwin, and countless others drove home a lesson that has only become more important to me over time: whenever societies try to protect people from ideas, they also protect bad ideas from scrutiny. Truth doesn’t emerge because authorities decree it. It emerges because claims are challenged, tested, criticized, and forced to survive contact with reality.

 

“That’s why I’ve always viewed free speech as far more than a political right. It is an epistemic technology -- a social invention that allows us to compare competing explanations of the world. Democracy, individual freedom, and scientific progress all benefit from and depend on that process. But the process itself comes first....

 

“Universities matter not because they protect scholars from scrutiny, but because they create spaces where assumptions can be tested, orthodoxies challenged, and sacred cows occasionally introduced to the concept of a slaughterhouse.

 

“The claim that academic freedom and free speech are unrelated -- made by Stanley Fish in The First, among others -- is utterly bizarre. As best I can tell, it’s also simply a tactical move to argue about why free speech can be limited, but academic freedom shouldn’t be (a self-serving argument for an academic, if there ever was one). Even authoritarian regimes understand the connection. The Chinese Communist Party does not tolerate political dissent, but it is forced to tolerate a meaningful degree of open disagreement within scientific and technical fields because otherwise their bridges fall down and their technology stagnation sets in....

 

“I have become more optimistic recently because we are finally seeing the first signs of something genuinely new. As regular [Eternally Radical Idea] readers will know, FIRE and the Cosmos Institute have partnered to fund spot grants for AI development focused on truth-seeking and epistemic humility. Through those collaborations, I’ve watched projects like Replication Radar and Priori experiment with using AI not as an all-knowing oracle, but as a systematic challenge system.” ...

 

Full op-ed  by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack.

 

Why a Massive Endowment Doesn't Mean a University Is Rich

 

Excerpts (link in original):

 

“When Princeton University announced in February that it would pursue ‘more targeted, and in some cases deeper, reductions over a multiyear period,’ the news landed with the force of a paradox. Here was an institution sitting atop a $35.7 billion endowment -- the fifth largest in the nation, telling its campus community it needed to cut.

 

“Princeton President Dr. Christopher Eisgruber had asked units across the university to make 5 to 7 percent cuts to their budgets, citing an increase in the endowment tax the institution faces and federal threats to research funding. Within months, all departments and university units were asked to prepare separate plans for 5 percent and 10 percent permanent budget cuts to be phased in over three years....

 

“Most people imagine an endowment as a vast reservoir of cash, available to be drawn upon at will. The reality is closer to a gallery of locked rooms, each with a donor's name above the door and a specific purpose written into the deed....

 

“Across higher education, roughly 40 percent of endowment assets are subject to permanent restrictions, 30 percent are temporarily restricted, and 29 percent are reserved for quasi-endowment use. The result: only a sliver of even the wealthiest institution's endowment is available for general operating needs at any given time.

 

“Yale acknowledged as much when it announced its own budget tightening, with university administrators emphasizing that most of its endowment consists of donor-restricted funds dedicated to financial aid, research, and academic programs. At Harvard, the framing was equally direct. The overwhelming majority of funds making up Harvard's endowment are donor-restricted, and even with endowment support, Harvard must fund nearly two-thirds of its operating expenses -- $6.8 billion in fiscal year 2025 -- from other sources, such as federal and non-federal research grants, student tuition and fees, and gifts from alumni, parents, and friends....

 

“The deeper problem is where those endowment dollars actually live. Yale and Harvard hold the highest unfunded private equity commitments at $8.1 billion and $8.2 billion respectively, and liquidity risk rankings show Yale in the second-highest position among elite institutions at 62.1 percent, followed by Harvard at 53.2 percent and Princeton at 51.2 percent.

 

“In plain terms, more than half of the investable assets at some of the world's most prestigious universities are locked up in private equity, hedge funds, real estate, and other illiquid positions that cannot quickly be converted to cash.” ...

 

Full article at EDU Ledger.

 

Yale Faculty Say Academic Freedom Has Decreased; Some Fear Dismissal or Arrest

 

Excerpt (link in the original):

 

“A majority of Yale University faculty members say their academic freedom has decreased in recent years, and half fear losing their jobs for teaching about controversial topics, according to a survey released [at the end of May].

 

“Of the 177 faculty members surveyed by the Yale chapter of the American Association of University Professors, 68.4 percent said their academic freedom has ‘decreased somewhat’ or ‘decreased a great deal’ since January 2025. About a third reported that their academic freedom has remained the same, and one respondent said their academic freedom has increased.

 

“Also since January 2025, 32 percent of faculty said they have avoided controversial topics in class or lectures, 7.3 percent removed readings from syllabi and 4 percent canceled a scholarly talk or course presentation. Outside the classroom, 21.5 percent said they have ‘jettisoned scholarship altogether,’ 47.5 percent said they stopped or avoided posting about controversial topics on social media and 30.5 percent said they have stopped talking to the press on such topics.” ... 

 

Full article at Inside Higher Ed.  

 

Other Articles of Interest

 

UC Professors Call for Reinstatement of SAT/ACT Math Requirement

 

Full article at EDU Ledger: “Math and science professors have signed an online letter that calls for the University of California system to reinstate the SAT/ACT math requirement in order to reverse a ‘widening divergence’ in math preparation.”

 

See also WSJ: “Open letter cites ‘severe preparation deficits’ among incoming students.”

 

See also “My Students Can’t Read” at Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

Stanford Law School Study Shows AI Outperforms Law School Professors

 

Full article at Stanford News Service: “A groundbreaking study led by Stanford Law School Professor Julian Nyarko reveals that law professors overwhelmingly prefer AI-generated answers to student questions over responses written by their fellow instructors -- a finding that could reshape how legal education is delivered.”

 

Commencement Is Broken; Here’s How to Fix It

 

Full op-ed by Brown U Prof. Emeritus John Tomasi at Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford

 

Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.

 

Stanford Leadership Forum Showcases Lessons on Change

 

Stanford Heterodox Chapter Hosts ‘Disagree with a Professor’ Event

 

Two Drugs Synergize, May Help Cystic Fibrosis

 

Electrical Pulses Extend Sea Squirt Lifespans, Offering Clues on Aging

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