Maggie's Farm

Tax money given to the universities is not an "investment. University leftist citadels hate "taxpayers". Government spending on universities is at best merely wasted on administrators and at worst is destroying our economy and country. Over 50% of STEM graduate students at US universities are foreign students who typically return home to compete against US industry. Why should we tax “The Rich” or anyone else to directly or indirectly fund foreign graduate student research (unless we have a suicide wish)? US foreign graduate student increase correlates historically over decades with US job and industry loss. Even worse, universities demand to immediately publish all US taxpayer-funded research work, so that foreign industry can immediately use it to better take US jobs and industry. Government-funded research at universities is actually very harmful to US jobs and industry.

Universities, which live off taxpayer funding, promote taxes on “the rich” to fund themselves, and overcome federal deficits. But more money could be saved by stopping funding to the "Rich Universities", as taxing the "Rich" who earn money.
Many universities are richer than “The Rich” who make more than $250K (from US News):

Harvard University
$32,012,729,000

Yale University
$19,174,387,000

Princeton University
$17,162,603,000

Stanford University
$16,502,606,000

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
$9,712,628,000

Columbia University
$7,789,578,000

University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
$7,725,307,000

University of Pennsylvania
$6,582,030,000

University of Notre Dame
$6,383,344,000

Duke University
$5,747,377,000

If “Rich University” students and research the want to train foreign students and publish for foreign manufacturers are important enough to them, these universities are well able to fund them for years without government handouts, while the US deficit is healed.

The same logical fairness sauce for “The Rich” hard-workers and job-creators is fairness sauce for “The Rich University” ganders. The universities still don't pay income tax on their earnings, in any event, while "The Rich" do.

To cut waste, prevent use of taxpayer funds to harm the country, and so the “rich Universities” can pay their fair share, Government research and all other funding should be limited to only those universities which:
-Have less than $250 million endowment.
-Which apply the government research funding only to US students (to avoid “amnesty” politics, US students are US citizens or those who have resided in the US for at least 5 years).
-Which agree to delay publication of research results for 1 year while such results are first available without charge to all US Industry under standard confidentiality agreement.
-which agree to give Professors and students all intellectual property rights to their own inventions relating to proposals and funding which they obtain from the government (so we can rekindle the job-creation which created Silicon Valley without university “toll boothing” and destruction of commercialization and entrepreneurship)

This way, we can stop unnecessary payments to “The Rich” universities to heal the deficit. There is no reason to spend money we don’t have, and tax anyone, to give “Rich” universities any federal money whatsoever. Especially when they are using it to destroy our economy, kill our domestic student seed corn, and facilitate job loss to foreign countries.