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Proposals for a higher tax on Harvard’s endowment income have gained traction under the Trump administration. In February, Rep. Mike V. Lawler (R-N.Y.) proposed increasing the endowment tax for Harvard and other wealthy universities by 8.6 percentage points (from 1.4 to 10 percent). Representatives Dave P. Joyce (R-OH) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) introduced a bill with the same target.

While my feelings about higher education are more positive than those of most congressional Republicans, I am cautiously supportive of an increased tax on endowment income – perhaps beginning at five percent or so.

Organizations are generally tax-exempt because they provide public services that are inadequately compensated by the market. Providing these services fulfills the organization’s duties to society, meaning they don’t need to contribute further through paying taxes. A museum, for example, is tax-exempt. Microsoft is not.

The question becomes: Is the Harvard Corporation more like a museum or Microsoft?

The truth is somewhere in between. On one hand, Harvard provides many public benefits. About 6 percent of endowment spending is allocated towards research costs, while around 20 percent is for scholarships and student support. The University has made concerted efforts to provide open access to its research through the Digital Access to Scholarship initiative.

On the other hand, Harvard’s services remain highly exclusive.

Harvard has the largest academic library system in the world, yet the public is generally unable to borrow books. 24 percent of endowment spending is for professorships, but only a privileged few receive the benefits of instruction. Class size has stayed relatively constant in recent years while almost every other Ivy League school has expanded. We could accommodate more students or, if college housing is limited, at least allow non-affiliated members of the community to enroll. I am currently in a class with 110 enrollees in a lecture hall that seats 300.

Art museums are available to everyone, sometimes for a modest fee. Homeless shelters cater to those in need. Harvard College enrolls fewer than 2000 students per year, two-thirds of whom come from families in the top 20 percent of America’s income distribution (according to a 2017 study). In many ways, Harvard education is a private good rather than a public one.

Harvard’s exclusivity inflicts a larger social cost. Plenty has been written about elite institutions’ role in reproducing economic hierarchy. The podcaster Matt Christman goes a step further, arguing that these institutions launder class privilege. They take a student’s class advantages — having a parent who attended Harvard, or living near a fencing club — and convert them into a credential that signals genuine merit.

Harvard has a complicated social role. It is neither entirely charitable nor entirely self-interested. I believe that its investment income should be taxed at a rate that reflects this middle ground.

If anything, a well-executed endowment tax could more efficiently advance the public good. A future government could spend endowment tax revenue on targeted research incentives for the most socially beneficial projects (such as biomedical innovation) rather than offering blanket tax exemptions for all of Harvard’s activities. It could spend tax revenue on federal tuition assistance: This aid reaches students attending far less expensive universities than Harvard, meaning each dollar goes further. A near-complete tax exemption is an imprecise reward for specific public goods.

I make this argument with two caveats.

Firstly, I don’t believe that this government spends its tax revenue perfectly. In the current climate, we could consider a state endowment tax instead of a federal one. (Massachusetts legislators considered a 2.5 percent tax in 2024.) Or we could wait a few years.

Secondly, some endowment tax proposals are ill-intentioned. In 2023, Vice President J.D. Vance proposed an endowment tax to deter “DEI and woke insanity.” Taxes should not be used to punish academic speech. Rather, they should ensure that wealthy institutions contribute to public good in a way commensurate with their resources.

Still, we ought to take the feeling behind these proposals seriously. Resentment towards elite universities is real, and it isn’t just about DEI and wokeness. We are living through a moment of acute economic anxiety. It is legitimate for the average person to feel that providing expensive intellectual experiences to a few thousand 19-year-olds is not a charitable cause.

The solution is not to forego intellectual experience. We can continue learning, teaching, and publishing — albeit with 95 percent of our current vigor — while paying our social dues more completely.

Annushka Agarwal ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a History and Mathematics concentrator in Kirkland House.