Who Profits From Upper West Side's Barnard College?--Part 2

As the Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution notes on its website, “most private non-profit colleges and universities are exempt from taxes;” and “only about 40” of these colleges and universities meet the criteria of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA,) that would require them to pay a tax of only 1.4 percent on their net investment income each year.

Yet from its “sale of securities” and “investment income (including dividends, interest and other similar amounts),” between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019, over $14.6 million was obtained by Barnard College. And the value of Barnard College’s endowment funds still exceeded $363 million and included over $90 million in “publicly traded securities” on June 30, 2019, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2018.

The market value of Barnard College’s investment in “private equities” exceeded $98.1 million on June 30, 2019, while the value of its investment in “hedged strategies” on that same date exceeded $97 million. In addition, on June 30, 2019, Barnard College’s investment in “international equities” exceeded $43.7 million and its investment in “domestic equities” exceeded $10.3 million.

Furthermore, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2018, on June 30, 2019 the value of Barnard College’s investment in for-profit business entities based “in Central America and the Caribbean” also exceeded $92.5 million. And between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019, the net value of “non-profit” Barnard College’s total assets increased from over $515 million to over $527 million.

Besides obtaining millions of dollars in revenues from owning stocks and bonds and investing in for-profit corporations that exploit essential women workers and consumers between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019, Barnard College also obtained over $42 million in “contributions and grants” during this same period. For example, over $8.7 million worth of “publicly traded securities” were collected as “noncash contributions” by “non-profit” Barnard College between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019.

In addition, on March 24, 2019 the “philanthropic” Hewlett Foundation gave a “charitable” grant of $1 million to Barnard College “for CORE Academy dedicated to the reform of economics education and enrichment of economic discourse;” and on June 6, 2019, the “philanthropic” Mellon Foundation—whose president is former Columbia University Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities Elizabeth Alexander—also gave a “charitable” grant of $1 million to Barnard “to support curricular development, research and community engagement around the issue of immigration, poverty, and the rights of labor in New York City.”

And, coincidentally, during the previous year, the Mellon Foundation also gave a “charitable” grant of $219,000 on March 15, 2018 to Barnard College “to support a New Directions Fellowship for John Morrison” (the Barnard College associate professor who chairs Barnard’s Department of Philosophy) and a “charitable” grant of $100,000 on May 17, 2018 to Barnard College to, purportedly, “support presidential initiatives.” (end of part 2. To be continued).