May 28, 2025 • 14 mins
The Trump administration has ramped up its attacks on Harvard University — threatening its tax-exempt status, federal funding and its ability to enroll international students.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s Brooke Sutherland and Francesca Maglione join host David Gura to unpack the latest developments and how they could ripple beyond the bounds of Harvard’s campus.
Read more: Here Are the Many Ways Trump Is Attacking Harvard
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Trump administration has been taking aim at higher education
for months now, but over the past few weeks it's
turned its tension to one university, in particular, Harvard.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
They're taking five billion dollars and I'd rather see that
money go to trade schools. And by the way, they're
totally anti Semitic.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
On Tuesday, the administration moved to cancel all remaining federal
contracts with Harvard that would effectively end the relationship it's
had with the university. This came a few days after
another attack on Harvard. The Trump administration took away the
school's ability to grant student visas, seeking to bar it
from enrolling international students.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
What I'm going to do is dreams, hopes, and twenty
years of my life coming to Harvard.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And I'm not exaggerating. I planned for it for fifteen years.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
When the news came out on Thursday, it was total
chaos for students.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
That's Francesca magleone who covers higher education from Bloomberg.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
There was a lot of confusion. Everyone had different questions.
They were calling immigration lawyers. I think the marching orders
were just trying not to panic and don't leave the country.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
The following day, Harvard sued the Trump administration for infringing
on its First Amendment rights, and a judge put a
temporary hold on Trump's order. It's the latest in an
ongoing pressure campaign from the President on the United States's
oldest university. The US government has already frozen two point
six billion dollars in federal funding, accusing Harvard of allowing
(01:37):
anti semitism on campus. Harvard has also filed suits challenging
those cuts, and the Trump administration has threatened to do
away with Harvard's tax exempt status, no small thing for
an institution that has a fifty three billion dollar endowment.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
This threatens the very financial survival of Harvard to have
all of these different levers turned off by the government.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Bloomberg's Boston bureau chief Brooks Sutherland says, the outcome of
this fight between the Trump administration and Harvard could have
ripple effects far beyond the bounds of the university.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
And so I think, you know, that's partly why you're
seeing the university take such a strong stance in terms
of fighting back.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'm David Gerret, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today on the show, what the Trump administration's
latest attacks on Harvard mean for the university and for
American higher education, and what could come next. Harvard is
the oldest and richest university in the US, but Bloomberg's
(02:40):
Boston bureau chief Brooks Sutherland told me that history, along
with its fifty three billion dollar endowment, doesn't insulate it
from the government's attacks. So let's talk about the latest
salvos from the Trump administration. Over the weekend, President Trump
posted on social media he's considering taking three billion dollars
off grant money away from Harvard, and he suggested he
would give that to trade schools. Walk us through what
(03:03):
that would mean for this institution to have that amount
of money disappear.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
It would be really crippling. I think we should say too,
that it's not necessarily clear that he intends to follow
through on this plane of giving all that money to
trade schools, or what exactly that would look like. The
two point six billion that's been frozen is primarily for
research funding, and trade schools do not do research funding,
and so it's not necessarily practical to take that bucket
(03:27):
of money and put it toward trade schools, but certainly
I mean in terms of moving forward with research projects.
Not having this money is material to Harvard, and you know,
we've seen projects get caught in between things like als
research to berculosis research. Another professor was looking into ways
to sort of mitigate the effects of radiation, which would
be very important if we have any intention of getting
(03:48):
to Mars, which is something that is very important to
both Trump and his advisor Elon Musk. The school has
talked about putting two hundred and fifty million of its
own money towards sustaining some of these important research, but
the federal government plays a key role in supporting this
and has historically done so. And it's worth mentioning too
that it's not just Harvard. You know a number of
other universities have seen their research funding pulled back or
(04:11):
under pressure from the Trump administration, which you know, gets
into bigger questions about US competitiveness and the appeal of
being in America to do these research projects, particularly those
that are sort of on the cutting edge and maybe
higher risk, which typically thrive off of US government support.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
On top of these funding cuts, the government has threatened
to revoke the tax exempt status that Harvard and other
schools with big endowments have traditionally benefited from.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
People think of Harvard as this very wealthy institution, and
it is, But that fifty three billion dollar involntment is
not just this pile of money sitting somewhere that Harvard
can draw on, however it pleases. Much of it is
invested in longer term investments that they can't necessarily get
out of quickly. A lot of it is also earmarked
for specific purposes. They can't just, you know, sort of
(04:59):
pick and s choose where they put that money and
use it to plug funding gaps, which is actually why
you've seen President Alan Garber of Harvard appealing directly to
alumni to donate to a different kind of fund. They're
calling it the Presidential Priorities Fund, and the idea would
be that the money that goes into that fund, the
president's office would have more jurisdiction over using that funding
(05:19):
to sort of plug gaps as they come up. But
that's a very different kind of vehicle than Harvard has
traditionally used.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And Bloomberg reporter Francesca Maglione says, if the government is
successful in barring international students. That would also hurt the
university's finances.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Most international students pay full tuition because they don't qualify
for federal aid, so this is a significant blow both
to their finances and to their enrollment as well.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Last week, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Nome, sent
a letter to Harvard telling the university it won't be
allowed to enroll international students in the twenty twenty five
twenty twenty six academic year, and that any international students
currently enrolled would lose their legal status if they don't
transfer to other schools.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
This is significant. At Harvard, almost thirty percent of the
student population is international, and Harvard isn't even one of
the schools that has the most. At Columbia, that number
is closer to forty percent. This is a big part
of US education. A number of international students has been
growing steadily throughout the years.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
In the meantime, the Trump administration has broadened its focus. Yesterday,
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered US embassies worldwide to
stop scheduling interviews for student visas, effective immediately. As for
Harvard's international students, a hearing on Thursday could determine how
long a judge's pause on Trump's initial order would hold,
(06:41):
is it possible for you to kind of say in
broad strokes what those thousands of students are thinking at
this point, what they're prioritizing, is they kind of wait
for all of this to play out.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Yeah, for these students, going to Harvard was their dream.
They worked really hard. It's not easy to get into Harvard,
and so I talked to students that talked about how
their family back home so proud of them, how they were,
you know, everybody was rooting for them. And then to
get that news on a random Thursday that you might
not be able to finish your degree that you worked
so hard on, paid so much money for, was devastating
(07:14):
to these students. I talked to students that said they
spent the day crying. I talked to students that had
families that now had to reevaluate where they were going
to live next year, what their life was going to
look like next year. This is a significant impact.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Well, Harvard and the US government wait for court decisions.
The rest of the world is preparing for the fallout.
How universities in other countries are preparing to fill a
potential gap in higher education and more on how Harvard
is fighting back after the break. The Trump administration says
(07:52):
its actions against Harvard are intended to hold the university
accountable for allegedly allowing anti semitism on campus. Vord sees
this differently. Here's Bloomberg's Boston bureau chief Brooks Sutherland. Again.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
What Harvard has said and its lawsuits pushing back is
that this is not really about anti semitism and is
more about the government trying to assert more control over
Harvard and the ways in which it manages its academic process, staffing, students'
rules on campus. That they say that it is a
case of government overstep infringement on their constitutional rights.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
This is another difficult chapter for the university. In December
twenty twenty three, its thirtieth president, Claudine Gay, testified in
front of Congress about Harvard's response to campus protests over
Israel's war in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules
of bullying and harassment? Yes?
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Or no?
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It can be depending on the context.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I will ask you what. A few weeks later, under
mounting pressure, Gay step down from the job. So Alan
Garbery is now the president of the institution. What has
he said and done in the fame of those allegations
that Harvard hasn't done enough to combat anti semitism on campus.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
It's interesting because, you know, he's very much acknowledged that
there are problems that the university would like to correct
on campus, and you know, some things that happened that
they need to address, and they're trying to take ownership
of that. They try to be very transparent, you know,
in terms of what has been happening at campus. They've
tried to commit to, you know, really stepping up to
(09:26):
making it the kind of place where everybody feels comfortable
to be. And so it's interesting because it's sort of
a twofold dynamic. On the one hand, they're suing to
prevent these actions by the Trump administration and really fighting back,
but they're also saying, we agree with you to some
extent that changes need to be made on campus, and
Harvard would say they are making those changes.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Garber was interviewed on NPR on Tuesday, and he said
he interpreted the administration's actions as a warning to other schools.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
And that is how it's understood by the other leaders
of other universities that I've spoken to, it is a warning.
They see this as a message that if you don't
comply with what we're demanding, these will be the consequences.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Brook What can we take away from the way that
Harvard is responding to these threats from the administration.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I think it sends a message around, you know, trying
to hold the line on those values that you know
this country considers most dear Harvard isn't impervious to the
federal government's threats, but it also is in a better
position to fight back than some of these smaller schools,
and so, you know, I think there's something to that that,
you know, if Harvard isn't going to push back on
(10:40):
these kinds of demands from the Trump administration, it makes
it much harder for smaller schools or those with a
smaller endowment to push back. And so I do think
that Harvard is setting somewhat of an example here for
other schools.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Harvard spokesperson said in a statement that the university is
quote fully committed to maintaining Harvard's ability to host our
international student and scholars who hail from more than one
hundred and forty countries and enrich the university and this
nation immeasurably. In its latest lawsuit, the school said without
its international students, Harvard is not Harvard. I asked Bloomberg's
(11:13):
Francesca magleone about that. Could we talk a bit about
the worst case here? I think as Harvard would see it,
as other institutions would see it, certainly students would see it.
That is, they can't enroll. What does that mean, more broadly,
for American higher education to have a system that no
longer welcomes foreign students, international students into US universities and colleges.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Yeah, that would be devastating. American higher education is the
envy of the world. You know, if you're not in
the US, you want to come study in the US.
I think they enroll the largest number of international students.
And also this comes out a time where these students
can't choose to transfer to another institutions. Most of them
have either confirmed that they're going to a certain school
(11:53):
or denied their acceptances to other schools, so they don't
really have many easy options as to what to do next.
It would take schools collaborating, schools opening up applications again
for them to be able to study somewhere else next year.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
We're talking about undergrads, graduate students, those who are already
enrolled and active in the university. What about for prospective students?
What are they thinking?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Even before this news, I had talked to several college
counselors that had mentioned that for their international students they
were advising them to have a plan B in case
anything like this happened.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
What are you seeing from countries and universities and other
countries in terms of their response to this. Has there
been an effect here where they're noting this and maybe
opening their doors in a way that they hadn't been before.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Some universities in Hong Kong have been saying that they
would be accepting more students. This is an opportunity for
other countries that have been competing with the US in
terms of enrolling international students to attract more students that
would have otherwise gone to Harvard or these other schools.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
This is a story about Harvard, of course, and its future,
but Harvard's impact is bigger and its reach is much wider.
Bloomberg's brook Sutherland says the university plays a vital role
in its home state's economy. In its backyard and all
over the world.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
These students don't just go to Harvard. They also you know,
are in Boston. They contribute to the economy. They spend
money on restaurants, they go out and they do activities,
what have you. Many of them also stay to work
at these businesses that are attracted to the talent pool
that comes out of Harvard, MIT and some of the
other top tier universities here or they you know, stay
and they work on research grants you know, through Harvard
(13:31):
or the hospitals or whatever it might be, which you
know are under threat now from the federal government as well.
The real asset for Boston and Massachusetts in general has
always been beds and meds, meaning educational and medical institutions.
And you know, this general thinking was that that was
sort of an impervious backbone to the economy, and that
(13:52):
is looking riskier and riskier. If you think about Harvard
as an employer, it is a massive job generator in
the state, but then it's also attracts those students. It
creates a talent pool that makes businesses want to be
here and invest in Massachusetts. And that's all now under.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Threat, under threat as Harvard prepares to hold its three
hundred and seventy fourth commencements on Thursday. Students, faculty, and
administrators are acutely aware that next years could look very different.
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gurratt.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
(14:31):
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Trump administration has been taking aim at higher education
for months now, but over the past few weeks it's
turned its tension to one university, in particular, Harvard.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
They're taking five billion dollars and I'd rather see that
money go to trade schools. And by the way, they're
totally anti Semitic.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
On Tuesday, the administration moved to cancel all remaining federal
contracts with Harvard that would effectively end the relationship it's
had with the university. This came a few days after
another attack on Harvard. The Trump administration took away the
school's ability to grant student visas, seeking to bar it
from enrolling international students.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
What I'm going to do is dreams, hopes, and twenty
years of my life coming to Harvard.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And I'm not exaggerating. I planned for it for fifteen years.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
When the news came out on Thursday, it was total
chaos for students.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
That's Francesca magleone who covers higher education from Bloomberg.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
There was a lot of confusion. Everyone had different questions.
They were calling immigration lawyers. I think the marching orders
were just trying not to panic and don't leave the country.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
The following day, Harvard sued the Trump administration for infringing
on its First Amendment rights, and a judge put a
temporary hold on Trump's order. It's the latest in an
ongoing pressure campaign from the President on the United States's
oldest university. The US government has already frozen two point
six billion dollars in federal funding, accusing Harvard of allowing
(01:37):
anti semitism on campus. Harvard has also filed suits challenging
those cuts, and the Trump administration has threatened to do
away with Harvard's tax exempt status, no small thing for
an institution that has a fifty three billion dollar endowment.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
This threatens the very financial survival of Harvard to have
all of these different levers turned off by the government.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Bloomberg's Boston bureau chief Brooks Sutherland says, the outcome of
this fight between the Trump administration and Harvard could have
ripple effects far beyond the bounds of the university.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
And so I think, you know, that's partly why you're
seeing the university take such a strong stance in terms
of fighting back.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'm David Gerret, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today on the show, what the Trump administration's
latest attacks on Harvard mean for the university and for
American higher education, and what could come next. Harvard is
the oldest and richest university in the US, but Bloomberg's
(02:40):
Boston bureau chief Brooks Sutherland told me that history, along
with its fifty three billion dollar endowment, doesn't insulate it
from the government's attacks. So let's talk about the latest
salvos from the Trump administration. Over the weekend, President Trump
posted on social media he's considering taking three billion dollars
off grant money away from Harvard, and he suggested he
would give that to trade schools. Walk us through what
(03:03):
that would mean for this institution to have that amount
of money disappear.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
It would be really crippling. I think we should say too,
that it's not necessarily clear that he intends to follow
through on this plane of giving all that money to
trade schools, or what exactly that would look like. The
two point six billion that's been frozen is primarily for
research funding, and trade schools do not do research funding,
and so it's not necessarily practical to take that bucket
(03:27):
of money and put it toward trade schools, but certainly
I mean in terms of moving forward with research projects.
Not having this money is material to Harvard, and you know,
we've seen projects get caught in between things like als
research to berculosis research. Another professor was looking into ways
to sort of mitigate the effects of radiation, which would
be very important if we have any intention of getting
(03:48):
to Mars, which is something that is very important to
both Trump and his advisor Elon Musk. The school has
talked about putting two hundred and fifty million of its
own money towards sustaining some of these important research, but
the federal government plays a key role in supporting this
and has historically done so. And it's worth mentioning too
that it's not just Harvard. You know a number of
other universities have seen their research funding pulled back or
(04:11):
under pressure from the Trump administration, which you know, gets
into bigger questions about US competitiveness and the appeal of
being in America to do these research projects, particularly those
that are sort of on the cutting edge and maybe
higher risk, which typically thrive off of US government support.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
On top of these funding cuts, the government has threatened
to revoke the tax exempt status that Harvard and other
schools with big endowments have traditionally benefited from.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
People think of Harvard as this very wealthy institution, and
it is, But that fifty three billion dollar involntment is
not just this pile of money sitting somewhere that Harvard
can draw on, however it pleases. Much of it is
invested in longer term investments that they can't necessarily get
out of quickly. A lot of it is also earmarked
for specific purposes. They can't just, you know, sort of
(04:59):
pick and s choose where they put that money and
use it to plug funding gaps, which is actually why
you've seen President Alan Garber of Harvard appealing directly to
alumni to donate to a different kind of fund. They're
calling it the Presidential Priorities Fund, and the idea would
be that the money that goes into that fund, the
president's office would have more jurisdiction over using that funding
(05:19):
to sort of plug gaps as they come up. But
that's a very different kind of vehicle than Harvard has
traditionally used.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And Bloomberg reporter Francesca Maglione says, if the government is
successful in barring international students. That would also hurt the
university's finances.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Most international students pay full tuition because they don't qualify
for federal aid, so this is a significant blow both
to their finances and to their enrollment as well.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Last week, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Nome, sent
a letter to Harvard telling the university it won't be
allowed to enroll international students in the twenty twenty five
twenty twenty six academic year, and that any international students
currently enrolled would lose their legal status if they don't
transfer to other schools.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
This is significant. At Harvard, almost thirty percent of the
student population is international, and Harvard isn't even one of
the schools that has the most. At Columbia, that number
is closer to forty percent. This is a big part
of US education. A number of international students has been
growing steadily throughout the years.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
In the meantime, the Trump administration has broadened its focus. Yesterday,
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered US embassies worldwide to
stop scheduling interviews for student visas, effective immediately. As for
Harvard's international students, a hearing on Thursday could determine how
long a judge's pause on Trump's initial order would hold,
(06:41):
is it possible for you to kind of say in
broad strokes what those thousands of students are thinking at
this point, what they're prioritizing, is they kind of wait
for all of this to play out.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Yeah, for these students, going to Harvard was their dream.
They worked really hard. It's not easy to get into Harvard,
and so I talked to students that talked about how
their family back home so proud of them, how they were,
you know, everybody was rooting for them. And then to
get that news on a random Thursday that you might
not be able to finish your degree that you worked
so hard on, paid so much money for, was devastating
(07:14):
to these students. I talked to students that said they
spent the day crying. I talked to students that had
families that now had to reevaluate where they were going
to live next year, what their life was going to
look like next year. This is a significant impact.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Well, Harvard and the US government wait for court decisions.
The rest of the world is preparing for the fallout.
How universities in other countries are preparing to fill a
potential gap in higher education and more on how Harvard
is fighting back after the break. The Trump administration says
(07:52):
its actions against Harvard are intended to hold the university
accountable for allegedly allowing anti semitism on campus. Vord sees
this differently. Here's Bloomberg's Boston bureau chief Brooks Sutherland. Again.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
What Harvard has said and its lawsuits pushing back is
that this is not really about anti semitism and is
more about the government trying to assert more control over
Harvard and the ways in which it manages its academic process, staffing, students'
rules on campus. That they say that it is a
case of government overstep infringement on their constitutional rights.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
This is another difficult chapter for the university. In December
twenty twenty three, its thirtieth president, Claudine Gay, testified in
front of Congress about Harvard's response to campus protests over
Israel's war in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules
of bullying and harassment? Yes?
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Or no?
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It can be depending on the context.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I will ask you what. A few weeks later, under
mounting pressure, Gay step down from the job. So Alan
Garbery is now the president of the institution. What has
he said and done in the fame of those allegations
that Harvard hasn't done enough to combat anti semitism on campus.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
It's interesting because, you know, he's very much acknowledged that
there are problems that the university would like to correct
on campus, and you know, some things that happened that
they need to address, and they're trying to take ownership
of that. They try to be very transparent, you know,
in terms of what has been happening at campus. They've
tried to commit to, you know, really stepping up to
(09:26):
making it the kind of place where everybody feels comfortable
to be. And so it's interesting because it's sort of
a twofold dynamic. On the one hand, they're suing to
prevent these actions by the Trump administration and really fighting back,
but they're also saying, we agree with you to some
extent that changes need to be made on campus, and
Harvard would say they are making those changes.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Garber was interviewed on NPR on Tuesday, and he said
he interpreted the administration's actions as a warning to other schools.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
And that is how it's understood by the other leaders
of other universities that I've spoken to, it is a warning.
They see this as a message that if you don't
comply with what we're demanding, these will be the consequences.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Brook What can we take away from the way that
Harvard is responding to these threats from the administration.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I think it sends a message around, you know, trying
to hold the line on those values that you know
this country considers most dear Harvard isn't impervious to the
federal government's threats, but it also is in a better
position to fight back than some of these smaller schools,
and so, you know, I think there's something to that that,
you know, if Harvard isn't going to push back on
(10:40):
these kinds of demands from the Trump administration, it makes
it much harder for smaller schools or those with a
smaller endowment to push back. And so I do think
that Harvard is setting somewhat of an example here for
other schools.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Harvard spokesperson said in a statement that the university is
quote fully committed to maintaining Harvard's ability to host our
international student and scholars who hail from more than one
hundred and forty countries and enrich the university and this
nation immeasurably. In its latest lawsuit, the school said without
its international students, Harvard is not Harvard. I asked Bloomberg's
(11:13):
Francesca magleone about that. Could we talk a bit about
the worst case here? I think as Harvard would see it,
as other institutions would see it, certainly students would see it.
That is, they can't enroll. What does that mean, more broadly,
for American higher education to have a system that no
longer welcomes foreign students, international students into US universities and colleges.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Yeah, that would be devastating. American higher education is the
envy of the world. You know, if you're not in
the US, you want to come study in the US.
I think they enroll the largest number of international students.
And also this comes out a time where these students
can't choose to transfer to another institutions. Most of them
have either confirmed that they're going to a certain school
(11:53):
or denied their acceptances to other schools, so they don't
really have many easy options as to what to do next.
It would take schools collaborating, schools opening up applications again
for them to be able to study somewhere else next year.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
We're talking about undergrads, graduate students, those who are already
enrolled and active in the university. What about for prospective students?
What are they thinking?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Even before this news, I had talked to several college
counselors that had mentioned that for their international students they
were advising them to have a plan B in case
anything like this happened.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
What are you seeing from countries and universities and other
countries in terms of their response to this. Has there
been an effect here where they're noting this and maybe
opening their doors in a way that they hadn't been before.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Some universities in Hong Kong have been saying that they
would be accepting more students. This is an opportunity for
other countries that have been competing with the US in
terms of enrolling international students to attract more students that
would have otherwise gone to Harvard or these other schools.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
This is a story about Harvard, of course, and its future,
but Harvard's impact is bigger and its reach is much wider.
Bloomberg's brook Sutherland says the university plays a vital role
in its home state's economy. In its backyard and all
over the world.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
These students don't just go to Harvard. They also you know,
are in Boston. They contribute to the economy. They spend
money on restaurants, they go out and they do activities,
what have you. Many of them also stay to work
at these businesses that are attracted to the talent pool
that comes out of Harvard, MIT and some of the
other top tier universities here or they you know, stay
and they work on research grants you know, through Harvard
(13:31):
or the hospitals or whatever it might be, which you
know are under threat now from the federal government as well.
The real asset for Boston and Massachusetts in general has
always been beds and meds, meaning educational and medical institutions.
And you know, this general thinking was that that was
sort of an impervious backbone to the economy, and that
(13:52):
is looking riskier and riskier. If you think about Harvard
as an employer, it is a massive job generator in
the state, but then it's also attracts those students. It
creates a talent pool that makes businesses want to be
here and invest in Massachusetts. And that's all now under.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Threat, under threat as Harvard prepares to hold its three
hundred and seventy fourth commencements on Thursday. Students, faculty, and
administrators are acutely aware that next years could look very different.
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gurratt.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
(14:31):
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow
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Sarah Holder
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