For Donald Trump, it’s always about the filthy lucre. 

Rewarding allies and punishing perceived adversaries financially has long been Trump’s raison d’être in business and politics. His life is a story of questionable real estate and tax payment shenanigans, a sham Trump University, hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and misuse of charitable funds at the Trump Foundation. His greed and shameless behavior seem to have no limits. Nor does his assault on higher education.

Now he and his party are after higher education endowments and Oregon’s private institutions, including those with large and small endowments, should be worried.

In 2017, during Trump’s first term, a Republican Congress passed the first excise tax on college endowments. Private colleges and universities now pay an annual 1.4% excise tax on endowment net investment income. The excise tax is levied on schools that have at least 500 tuition-paying students and net assets of at least $500,000 per student. 

Because the $500,000 is not adjusted for inflation, the threshold is being effectively lowered over time. The tax has affected about 50-55 institutions to date. 

In 2023, 56 universities paid about $380 million under the endowment tax, up from about $68 million in 2021 and slightly more than the $200 million annual forecast made by the Joint Committee on Taxation in 2017.

In 2023, when he was still a U.S. Senator, J. D. Vance introduced the College Endowment Accountability Act which proposed increasing the excise tax from 1.4% to 35% for secular, private, nonprofit colleges and universities with at least $10 billion in assets under management.

“University endowments…have grown incredibly large on the backs of subsidies from the taxpayers, and they have made these universities completely independent of any political, financial, or other pressure, and that is why the university system in this country has gone so insane,” Vance asserted. 

Vance’s bill went nowhere, but the issue resurfaced in January 2025 when Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-TX) introduced the Endowment Tax Fairness Act, a bill that would raise the excise tax levied on certain private university endowment profits from 1.4% to 21%. 

The tax would apply to private colleges and universities with 500 or more students with an aggregate fair market value of assets of at least $500,000 per student of the institution, and more than 50% of the student body is located within the United States. 

The Tax Foundation, assuming a 7.5 percent average annual return, estimates Nehis’ bill would raise about $69.8 billion in additional revenue over 10 years.

The House Ways & Means Committee also appears interested in raising the endowment tax rate. Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) pitched the idea during an all-member meeting among House Republicans in January as well. 

In February, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) introduced the Endowment Accountability Act, proposing raising the excise tax rate from 1.4% to 10% of endowment income and lowering the per-student endowment threshold from $500,000 to $200,000, likely pulling in many more colleges.  

“If passed, such a tax would fundamentally alter the relationship between the government and many nonprofit colleges, as well as between those institutions and their donors,” reported Higher Ed Dive. “Moreover — and perhaps more importantly as a practical reality — such a tax could land hard on students, research programs and college operations.

Many institutions with much lower profiles than the Harvards of the world could get taxed if lawmakers broadened the threshold for paying, Jason Delisle, with the Urban Institute, said at an American Council on Education panel. And that’s exactly what higher ed institutions are preparing for. 

“University leaders and endowment chiefs also expect Congress to consider raising the tax on the richest endowments and expanding the number of schools affected,” the Wall Street Journal reported. And there’s talk of spreading the pain around more, hitting up smaller schools with smaller endowments, too. 

Although it may not be maintained in a final bill, under a tax plan unveiled by House Republicans on May 12, 2025, some universities would pay an annual tax of up to 21%. on their annual net investment income in endowments.

According to data from the National Association of College and University Business Officers and the asset management firm Commonfund, colleges spend the largest share of endowment funds on student financial aid (48.1% in FY2024), followed by academic programs and research (17.7% in FY2024).

Mauling endowments with egregious excise taxes would seriously threaten the ability of many schools to maintain these efforts, though that may not be of much concern to Trump and his allies, who have so far displayed little more than contempt for higher education.  

FY2024 endowments at selected private higher education institutions in Oregon^[1]

^[1]

 Source: 2024 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments (NCSE)