Despite its estimated $53 billion endowment, Harvard University faces an uphill climb to make up for the billions in Trump-administration ordered cuts. 

The Hill reported that what seems like an easy fix to the university’s financial shortfall is a lot harder than might appear at first glance.  The report says as much as 80% of the Harvard endowment funds are earmarked for specific purposes that are aside from regular expenses or were donated for clearly defined uses like research.

Sandy Baum with the Urban Institute told The Hill, “It’s not like a bank account.” The spending designations, she said, limit how and where the money can be used. “The idea is that you’ll have it sort of forever so that you can take income from it and fund some activity, but you could do that forever.” Being told to just pay bills with it, she said, is not how things work. “So not just for students today, but for students in the future.”

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