These 77 Colleges (And 45 Law Schools) Have The Most To Lose From Trump’s Cuts

Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed:  These 77 Colleges Have the Most to Lose From Trump’s Cuts, by Phillip Levine (Wellesley College & Brookings Institution):

What does President Trump mean for college finances? In January, I speculated that colleges could be in for belt-tightening or even extensive damage in the case of an increased endowment tax — though the situation wasn’t yet clear. A few months into his administration, some of the details are becoming clearer, and the likely result is that many colleges face an enormous financial impact.

The obvious examples include the funding-cutoff threats made to Columbia University ($400 million), the University of Pennsylvania ($175 million), Harvard University ($9 billion!), Brown University ($510 million), Princeton University ($210 million), Cornell University ($1 billion), and Northwestern University ($790 million). Those ad hoc threats are extensive, but they overlook the broader financial risk that dozens of institutions face by more-systematic policy interventions. These include potential cuts to National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation funding, along with a tax on the endowments of wealthy private institutions. I focus on these three policies because they have the greatest potential to significantly disrupt the financial workings of a large number of institutions.

In total, 77 institutions find themselves subject to large costs associated with at least one of these policies. ... The results of this analysis are presented in the following table. It contains estimated endowment taxes, NIH cuts, and NSF cuts separately, along with their total cost for each of the 77 institutions listed. These institutions were selected because they were among the top 50 in the country in the rankings of at least one of three categories: the total cost of these policies, the total cost per student, and the total cost as a percentage of total expenses. Many institutions face top-50-level exposure to more than one of these measures. Other institutions also face risks, but these have the most at stake should Trump’s policies become effective.

Here are the 45 institutions with law schools and the total costs of Trump's cuts:

Rank	Institution	Total Cost
1	Harvard	$666,800,000
2	Yale	$626,300,000
3	Stanford	$561,800,000
5	Penn	$419,800,000
7	Duke	$278,200,000
8	Washington University	$273,400,000
9	Northwestern	$256,500,000
10	Vanderbilt	$241,500,000
11	Michigan	$223,900,000
12	Notre Dame	$220,700,000
13	Emory	$215,000,000
14	Columbia	$197,600,000
17	University of Washington	$171,700,000
18	Texas	$170,700,000
19	Cornell	$170,400,000
20	Pittsburgh	$143,100,000
21	Wisconsin	$132,100,000
22	NYU	$124,900,000
25	UCLA	$117,100,000
26	Minnesota	$114,300,000
28	Chicago	$107,500,000
30	North Carolina	$100,700,000
31	Illinois	$92,700,000
32	USC	$90,600,000
33	Florida	$90,100,000
34	UC-Berkeley	$87,800,000
35	Ohio State	$86,300,000
36	Arizona State	$83,800,000
37	UC-Irvine	$81,300,000
38	UC-Davis	$81,200,000
39	Utah	$80,800,000
40	Indiana-Maurer	$76,300,000
41	Penn State	$76,300,000
42	Rutgers	$67,100,000
45	University of Arizona	$62,900,000
46	Virginia	$62,600,000
48	Illinois-Chicago	$56,100,000
50	Michigan State	$50,200,000
51	Nebraska	$47,500,000
52	Hawaii	$47,000,000
55	Case Western	$43,100,000
58	Richmond	$35,200,000
66	Arkansas-Little Rock	$27,300,000
68	Washington & Lee	$22,400,000
70	Idaho	$18,300,000

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to legal education posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.