Universities With AAA Credit? Rate Them F-Minus - Millennial Money with Cliff Mason

BIO

Cliff Mason is the author of Millennial Money. He is the Senior Writer of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and has been that program's primary writer, in cooperation with and under the supervision of Jim Cramer, since he began at CNBC as an intern during the summer of 2005. Mason was the author of a column at TheStreet.com during 2007, which he describes as "hilarious, if short-lived." He graduated from Harvard College in 2007. It was at Harvard that Mason learned to multi-task, mastering the art of seeming to pay attention to professors while writing scripts for Mad Money. Mason has co-written two books with Jim Cramer: Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich and Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). He is 100% responsible for any parts of either book that you did not like. Mason has also had a fruitful relationship with Jim Cramer as his nephew for the last 23 years and will hopefully continue to hold that position for many more as long as he doesn't do anything to get himself kicked out of the family.

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Mar.19

5:14 PM ET

Thursday, 19 Mar 2009

Universities With AAA Credit? Rate Them F-Minus

Posted By:Cliff Mason

Topics:Stock Market

The spectacularly ruthless and insanely generous Andrew Carnegie once said, "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced."

I just saw that Harvard and Princeton both have AAA credit ratings, so allow me to paraphrase: "The university that lives with a triple-A credit rating lives disgraced."

I've railed about schools caring more about their endowments than anything else before, but this really blows me away. Harvard, Princeton, they're non-profits. But they have better credit ratings than General Electric [GE Loading... () ], the parent company of this Web site.

Maybe they should be focusing more on educating their students, and less on their creditworthiness?

In my experience, being outstanding in one arena almost always detracts from your performance everywhere else. Perhaps they should be trying for mere adequacy as financial institutions and unparalleled excellence in education, rather than making sure they can borrow at reasonable rates? I think their priorities are misplaced — but then again, I only got a Harvard education, so what do I know about priorities?

The real problem, I hope, is not that Ivy League schools truly care more about their money than their mission. It's the quantification gap: It's really hard to measure educational excellence. Money? Quantification is its essence.

It's tempting to focus too much on things that can be counted at the expense of those that can't. I just wish my alma mater could resist the temptation.

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