> Yeah, I'm aware that it doesn't. Maybe it shouldn't exist then? I don't think we should be putting institutions that aren't in the national interest on a pedestal like this.

I can't even begin to express how nutty this idea is. MIT's existence is certainly in the national interest. MIT is the world's best university for training engineers and the world needs good engineers. The more, the better. The better they are, the better. MIT is also excellent in other fields as well. I.e., stuff that the world needs.

> Let them lose non-for-profit status and have their massive endowments get taxed.

More insanity!

Look, I work at a famous research institute that is affiliated with MIT and Harvard. Our goal is to do fundamental research aimed at treating and curing cancer and other genetically-based diseases. Many people want to work here because it is so prestigious. And it's a non-profit because it makes no money.

But getting a job here isn't egalitarian or "fair". The people who are hired are hired because the people hiring them believe that they are the best candidate for doing the job. Modulo affirmative action considerations, etc.

So now you'd want to take away our tax-free status? The consequence of doing this is that some terrible diseases that might otherwise be cured might not be. And the same thing is true if you were to take away MIT's and Harvard's tax-free status, because the research institute where I work has close research ties to both MIT and Harvard.

You seem to have lost sight of the purpose of research universities. They do research! Valuable research. And students get to come and be with the researchers and learn from them.

At MIT, every undergraduate student can participate in research. Often with the leading expert in the field.

Regarding sailing being for the rich, it costs $90 a day to rent a four-person sailboat on the Charles River. Anyone in Boston can do this who knows how to swim and sail. Divided by 4, that's $22.50 per person for a day of sailing. Is this really a sport only for the rich?

Let's get rid of the tennis courts and the swimming pool and the bowling alley while we're at it!

> Unless you're arguing that folks that get into MIT are just inherently superior

Inherently superior? No, of course not. But MIT's difficulty level is "calibrated" to those in the top 1% of scholastic aptitude. If someone doesn't have an aptitude somewhere in this ballpark, MIT is probably not going to be a rewarding experience for them.

In the US, the last I checked, 50% of high school graduates went on to college. MIT's difficulty level is clearly calibrated to only a few percent of these college students.

Also, clearly, if we crunched the numbers, we'd quickly determine that there are lot more students in the country who are at an appropriate aptitude level for MIT than MIT can actually admit. Well, such is life. There are plenty of other great schools. MIT can't take everyone who is qualified to attend MIT. No college can.

Life isn't always fair, nor can it be. Just like not everyone can work at my research institute that might want to.

On the other hand, there are plenty of other high-quality choices for education. You don't have to go to MIT to get a high-quality engineering education. And there are plenty of other opportunities in the world for those who wish to do genomics-based disease research.