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Republicans in Congress seek to extract billions of dollars from taxes resulting from the endowment of the best American private universities by raising investment returns rates amid a broader attack on the elite academic circles.

At least three bills proposed since January to raise the tax rate on investment returns to 21 percent, from 1.4 percent currently. Two bills also reduce the threshold of universities with less than $ 200,000 in assets per student, compared to the current level of $ 500,000. Increase It can collect up to $ 112 billion During the next decade, according to the non -profit tax institution.

Dozens of the richest country Schools It will be subject to fees if approved, including Harvard University, Stanford and Bruneston. Universities invest the endowment assets and use gains to finance all types of operations, including researchers, financial aid, student colleagues, and campus activities. For some, such as the Harvard Fund worth $ 50 billion, investment revenues are the largest individual financing source for school, and it represents more than a third of revenues.

Proposal tax The increases are the latest in a hail of financing, uncertainty and threats to higher education that kept university officials on the brink of the abyss since US President Trump took office again in January. Schools across the country have already seen billions of dollars from scholarships of federal research, and other funding becomes in danger or disappearing, which raised their doubts about their motives and anxiety about affecting university financial affairs and the ability to bear costs.

“Only to take money from institutions and send them to Washington,” said Stephen Bloom, Assistant Vice President of the Government Relations of the American Education Council, which represents universities. He added that 48 percent of the endowment spending went towards financial aid. “If the goal is to provide financial aid, the tax will undermine it.”

A spokesman for the Republican actor Troy Nils from Texas, who proposed the draft law at a tax rate of 21 percent, said his main goal is to “bring equivalence between the tax prices paid by individuals and companies on their investment income and taxes paid by the major university gifts.”

One of the senior officials of the association representing universities said that the endowment tax proposals – in addition to other financing discounts and recent attacks on higher education by the Trump administration – sparked “uncertainty and chaos” across universities.

Tax cuts and jobs from Trump’s first term imposed a 1.4 percent tax on the endowment of the country’s richest universities for the first time, which is an extraordinary step given its historical treatment as non -profit institutions. Only 56 institutions She had to pay in 2023, with a total of $ 380 million.

This time, the smaller endowments may also be a victim. One of the bills he presented last month by actors Dave Joyce from Ohio and Nicole Malekays from New York to impose capital profit tax on schools with a minimum of $ 250,000 of the endowment assets for each student.

“Small schools are not financially strong enough to bear more money that is removed from their gifts,” said John Griffiths, director of Hurtel Callen and Co. and former heads of financial directors at Brain Maour College. “They have much less financial flexibility.”

While the bills are far from becoming a law, universities feel panic because the proposals seem to be supported by the White House. In 2023, while Senator, JD Vance to raise the tax on rich institutions to 35 percent – 14 degrees Celsius higher than the most severe proposals than this legislative session.

Although the proposals do not explicitly indicate the ideology of the campus or recent protests against the Israeli war, some university officials in particular have suggested that this is the motive for leadership.

A university official said: “This is a way for the current administration to punish some of the large institutions that they believe are teaching students with an awakening ideology,” said a university official. “If you look at the expected revenues that such a tax will produce actually, this is laughing. Reducing the resources available to institutions will erode our higher education system.”

Senator Tom Couton of Arkansas revealed the endowment security law called Tuesday, and suggested a 6 % tax on one -time on the 11 richest private schools in the country. “Our elite universities need to know the cost of paying the agendas of anti -American and supporters of terrorism,” Koton wrote on Tuesday.

Fear of high taxes alone has an effect already. Stanford and Cornell universities were martyred by increasing employment freezing.

The fees work on its way through Congress where the pressure on the White House is more funding to finance the highest universities. Last week, the Trump administration canceled about $ 400 million in scholarships and federal contracts for the University of Colombia in New York.

The withdrawal in Federal support for Colombia follows the aftermath of the National Institutes of Health, and it plans to reduce federal spending at $ 4 billion annually for research projects throughout the United States – discounts that scientists have warned will be disastrous for research universities.

“The ability to withstand the costs of this university depend on the endowment,” said Christopher Esgerper, President of Prinston, during a municipal hall for employees in February, as it witnessed records by the Times.

“If taxes are imposed on the endowment, the consequences must earn some of those things we do.”

Imagine data by Sam Learner