Podbit · The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
If a university chooses to be a luxury brand rather than a public servant, it should pay the same taxes as a private company. The One Big Beautiful Bill raised the endowment tax to 8% — but Galloway says this still won't change behavior.
Where this was said
At 12:30 · chapter starts 8:55
Jeff has been told by university administrators that endowment funds are legally untouchable — and he wants to know if that's true. Galloway starts with the data: $944 billion across 657 institutions, Harvard's $53 billion growing at $2 billion a year, $7 million per undergrad. [1] — Scott Galloway "US universities sit on $944 billion in endowments while keeping class sizes artificially flat. Harvard's endowment grows $2 billion a year …" 08:55 He acknowledges that donor-restricted funds are legally constrained — a divinity professorship endowed in 1721 still dictates how those dollars are spent — but stresses that restricted funds don't describe the entire endowment; Stanford's is only 75% restricted. The real governor is UPMIFA, which encourages restrained spending but mandates nothing. The 5% annual spend rate is an informal norm, not a legal ceiling — and private foundations, unlike universities, are legally required to hit that floor. The 2017 excise tax and the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill raised the tax pressure modestly, but Galloway doubts the numbers move behavior. His core argument: universities like Dartmouth — $8 billion endowment, ~1,100 students admitted — have voluntarily become luxury brands, restricting supply to protect prestige in a Businessweek-ranking death spiral. [1] — Scott Galloway "US universities sit on $944 billion in endowments while keeping class sizes artificially flat. Harvard's endowment grows $2 billion a year …" 08:55 That's a business decision, and businesses pay taxes. If you're a hedge fund with classes, you should pay hedge fund taxes.
US universities sit on $944 billion in endowments while keeping class sizes artificially flat. Harvard's endowment grows $2 billion a year yet tuition keeps rising — behavior Galloway equates to hoarding, not stewardship.
US universities collectively hold nearly $1 trillion in endowed assets across 657 institutions.
Harvard's $53 billion endowment works out to more than $7 million per undergraduate student, yet class sizes stayed flat and tuition kept rising.
Harvard's endowment has grown roughly $2 billion a year since 2018 while freshman class sizes remained flat.
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act imposed a 1.4% excise tax on net investment income for colleges with endowments exceeding $500,000 per student, affecting about 56 schools.
The One Big Beautiful Bill signed July 2025 raised the endowment tax to 8% for institutions with endowments over $2 million per student, hitting Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT.
University rankings reward selectivity, which incentivizes schools to restrict admissions, which drives up rankings, which attracts more applicants, which lets them be even more selective. It's a death spiral that treats education as a luxury good.
Your brain only rewires when there's a gap between where you are and where you want to be. Errors trigger elevated norepinephrine and epinephrine, which chemically tag the synapses that need to change. Sleep then seals the new wiring. The uncomfortable agitation you feel while learning something hard is not a problem to fix — it's the mechanism itself.
The best way to consolidate and accelerate learning isn't re-reading or visualization — it's deliberately trying to recall what you know, hitting the wall of what you don't, and going to look it up. That gap triggers the same norepinephrine response as making errors in physical practice. It's why drivers used to have to retake tests, and why physicians still do.
A baseball-playing junior who learned about compound interest now wants to quit the sport to start working and investing. George says let him decide and own it. Jade says team sports build something a job can't replace — try doing both during off-season first before making the call permanent.
May is 33, carries $69K in combined household debt, and wants to spend 11–13 years training to become a forensic pathologist at $14K/year in tuition. The prerequisite is non-negotiable: zero debt before a single class. Then, with the spouse earning $4,500/month and able to run the household debt-free, cash-flowing medical school is genuinely possible.
Kavak launched the Jedi Academy, an internal program where every employee — from CEO to mechanics — completes a 6-week training and ships a production-ready AI agent. The message to staff was blunt: train and adapt, or this may not be the right place for you.
The worst AI outcome for young people isn't cheating on homework. It's that passive, mindless consumption strips away the motivation and agency their brains need to develop. The second worst outcome is banning AI from classrooms entirely. The winning path is giving students AI-powered agency.
Prompting AI effectively is a skill that should be taught in K-12. The best prompter in history? Socrates. His method of relentlessly asking precise questions to uncover truth is exactly what powerful AI interaction looks like — and schools should explicitly teach it.
When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, Fei-Fei Li's first move was to email her child's elementary school principal and offer to lecture teachers and students. No investor or tech company did that. Teachers are scared, forgotten, and lectured at — and if they're not helped, neither are the kids.
After the KSI show exposed how hard physical comedy really is, Andrew Santino sincerely proposed doing a semester at clown school in France. Bobby agreed. This is apparently a real plan.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.