It is not news that the Ivy League universities are getting richer and more dominant. Some of it is through generous donations, but the larger part is through investment gains from their endowment. Do they still enjoy tax-exempt status on these gains?
A very revealing quote from BusinessWeek: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_50/b4062038784589.htm ---------------------------------------------------snip "One thing we all must worry about—I certainly do—is the federal support for scientific research. And are we all going to be chasing increasingly scarce dollars?" says Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's new president. Not that Faust seems worried about Harvard or other top-tier research schools. "They're going to be—we hope, we trust, we assume—the survivors in this race," she says. As for the many lesser universities likely to lose market share, she adds, they would be wise "to really emphasize social science or humanities and have science endeavors that are not as ambitious" as those of Harvard and its peers. -raghu.
