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The proposal threatens to cost Harvard about $850 million a year, Yale $690 million year, and Princeton $586 million a year, according to estimates by economics professor Phillip Levine.

Economist Phillip Levine never heard of a college adopting a wait-and-see budgeting approach like Swarthmore’s. “It’s a creative solution… idiosyncratic of the times that we are currently living in.”

Economics professor Phillip Levine calculated that nine schools would hit the top tax rate, and Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT would each owe more than $410 million in taxes a year.

60 college presidents, including Paula Johnson, are sharing messages about civic discourse, democratic participation, and free expression to inspire grads to think critically and engage with empathy.

Wellesley's 2025 Commencement speaker was Isabel Wilkerson, journalist who has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal and author of “The Warmth of Other Suns” and “Caste.”

A 14 percent endowment tax—in the middle range of the proposals—would cost Harvard, for example, about $560 million a year, according to an analysis by economics professor Phillip Levine.

If Harvard loses tax-exempt status, the university will “lose the ability to enroll the very brightest lower and middle-income students who can now afford to be able to enroll," says Phillip Levine.

“The perception that college is financially inaccessible is out there,” says Phil Levine. “Every time there is another headline that says college costs $100,000, it inadvertently misleads people.”

Not even heavy rain could dampen the excitement as Wellesley College seniors ran down Tupelo Lane with wooden hoops in one of the school’s oldest traditions. Arushi Ghosh ’25 was this year’s winner.