The Ivy League, reaping billions. As it must. It should. It always will.

Now here's a touch of real-world social justice.

"University endowment managers, long criticized for the fees they pay out to private equity firms and hedge funds, have something to show for it: eye-popping returns. Yesterday, M.I.T. reported that its endowment had gained 56 percent in its most recent fiscal year, which ended in June. Yale also published its latest returns yesterday, with its endowment up 40 percent over the same period, its third-highest annual return since 1970. Dartmouth posted a return of nearly 47 percent. Duke reported a 56 percent return."

Private equity firms. A euphemism for corporate raiding, gotcha-by-the-balls takeovers, brutal layoffs and family destruction.

But hey, I live in the real world. Such is capitalism.

I accept it. Especially since Marx's famed "proletariat" — in America, at least — hasn't the balls their keepers have. Believe me. There is no "worker solidarity." I've worked with American workers in some of the least desirable jobs imaginable. And each one of them would sell out his or her workmates for an extra dime an hour. That's not a criticism. It's an acknowledgement of life.

I taught for one year at an exclusive boy's school. Nearly all the seniors were guaranteed a placement in some Ivy college. Their final year of "education" was, to them, a joke. One senior blurted this to me in class: "So what? So what if we're privileged? That's life, I'd say to the poor. They just weren't lucky." He lacked any intellectual potty training at home. Thus go the generations.

At one "luncheon" sponsored by the boy's school (one never invites others to "lunch," only luncheons will do), a batty old broad sat next to me, brimming with unearned pride in her fucking loser of a son. This, excluding the untimely death of my loved one, was the most painful hour of my life.

Her "boy" was headed to Yale, she preened. "They think differently at Yale, you know," she kindly informed me. I gathered that meant, well, you know. At that very moment my proletarian guts heaved up into my vocal chords and blasted this: "Your son would get a far better education at a state university. PhDs teach there. At an Ivy school, he'll get nothing but TAs."

Her look? Priceless: total unawareness but mostly shock that anyone would dare deflate her privileged hubris.

It has haunted me ever since. Not because I may have hurt that lady's feelings. Fuck her, and fuck her progeny. What haunts me is this: They'll never be fucked. Ever. They'll go right on enjoying the welfare of their privilege. Without even a simple acknowledgement of its unfairness.

But damn am I glad MIT had a 56% return on its investments last year. Lord knows they needed it. One must maintain the image of superiority, you know.

Comments

[Peter G]

For myself I exempt MIT from the justifiable contempt one can have for most of the IVY league colleges. You can get into those places based on your status as a legacy where dimness of bulb does not count against you. You cannot get into MIT that way although some privileges doubtless attaches to the monied. To be fair I once dreamed of attending MIT. So it was with some pleasure that when MIT put its entire undergraduate curriculum online for the public I discovered that it was exactly the same curriculum I studied right down to the course descriptions. Its pretty much standard everywhere in North America. Which leads me to believe much the same is true in every field of endeavor.

But you know why I am delighted that these Ivy League colleges are doing so well in the markets? If anything could divorce them from accepting rich dimbulbs, or at least less of them, then a big fat endowment could. Maybe.

[Ivory Bill Woodpecker]

"They'll never be fucked. Ever."

Until, of course, the day that they, or their descendants, are.

And neither they, nor we, nor anyone else, know when that will happen.

The dinosaurs were lords of the Earth right up to the day the asteroid hit.