Bill Ackman analyzes Harvard like a stock, showing enrollment flat for twenty years while administrative staff surged 40% and faculty grew just 0.5%. He argues the university raises prices instead of expanding, and suggests Harvard's brand damage comes from being too woke.
Bill Ackman did a presentation about Harvard. Buy, sell, or hold in the same way you would do with a stock. He breaks it down like it's a company, and then he has like a graph. Enrollment has been flat over the last 20 years. Faculty growth has been modest, growing at half a percent, but administration growth has grown by 40% in 20 years.
He says you're growing by increasing prices, not by increasing the number of customers served.
He breaks down the P&L. Where's the revenue stream? So how much is coming from donations versus tuition? Obviously, his agenda in this whole thing was to basically be like, Harvard has gone too woke. You're ruining the brand and the mission of Harvard.
His verdict, he says, Harvard a buy, sell, or hold? Harvard is a hold. It still has many positive attributes. It has a strong brand, 400-year operating history, $51 billion endowment, and huge real estate. But it has many challenges. The quality of the education has deteriorated. There's so many competitors. They've misallocated resources, and the endowment has been a chronic underperformer. This is a very interesting way to look at many different decisions in life that are beyond just money. How awesome is this?
