Proposals to cut federal research funding and increase the tax on private university endowments ... More could have huge impacts on the finances of leading universities. While most universities crave the attention of being rated among the top 20 institutions in the country in one of the ranking systems that receive so much attention each year, a new list has emerged, and it’s one on which no school will want to see its name. Philip Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College, has calculated how much funding universities could lose if they faced the cumulative effect of three recent policies that have been attempted or proposed by the Trump administration. In his article,“These 77 Colleges Have the Most to Lose From Trump’s Cuts,” published this week in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Levine analyzed the numbers from various data bases that illustrated the potential effects of the following three proposals: A 15% cap by the National Institutes of Health on the “indirect costs” it would reimburse on research grants. This policy has already been introduced, but a federal court has blocked its implementation. A two-thirds reduction in National Science Foundation grant funding, a figure that is reportedly under consideration. The imposition of a larger tax on university endowment returns. The range of the proposed increase has varied from 10 percent to more than 20 percent. Levine settled on a tax of 14 percent on the net investment returns of private colleges with endowments greater than $500,000 per student. He then reported the financial impact for each of those three policies individually and combined, and he also computed the total losses on a per-student basis and as a percentage of an institution’s budget. Here are the top 20 universities on Levine’s list, ranked on the basis of the total loss they could see from the three funding reductions. 1. Harvard University $666,800,000 MORE FOR YOU 2. Yale University $626,300,000 3. Stanford University $561,800,000 4. Princeton University $437,000,000 5. University of Pennsylvania $419,800,000 6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology $352,500,000 7. Duke University $278,200,000 8. Washington University in St Louis $273,400,000 9. Northwestern University $256,500,000 10. Vanderbilt University $241,500,000 11. University of Michigan $223, 900,000 12. University of Notre Dame $220,700,000 13. Emory University $215,000,000 14. Columbia University $197,600,000 15. University of California San Diego $197,600,000 16. Johns Hopkins University $181,400,000 17. University of Washington $171,700,000 18. University of Tcxas $170,700,000 19. Cornell University $170,400,000 20. University of Pittsburgh $143,100,000 The first ten institutions on the list would all see substantial losses in each of the three categories, what Levine referred to as a “triple whammy.” As private institutions, they have large endowments that would be subject to an increased tax and they operate large research programs, particularly in the traditionally well-funded areas of engineering and health. Most of the next ten institutions would also face large financial threats from all three sources, except for public universities like the University of Michigan or University of Texas, which would not be hit with the proposed endowment tax. If we look at the reductions as a percentage of operating expenses, several institutions in the top 20 would see a double-digit impact. Princeton University would experience a 19% loss, followed by Vanderbilt University at 16%, Notre Dame at 14%, Yale at 13% and Harvard at 11%. Elsewhere on the list of 77 institutions that Levine analyzed, more than a dozen private liberal-arts colleges, like Grinnell, Wellesley, Swarthmore or Williams, would see a budget impact exceeding 10%. As bad as this news might be, it could become even worse if we consider other policy changes in the works. Most of these universities and colleges have relatively large enrollments of international students. The Trump administration’s promised crackdown on immigration could erode those enrollments and their associated tuition dollars significantly. And, as Levine and others point out, a reduction in federal Medicaid matching funds to the states would have a large knock-on effect, forcing them to either cut Medicaid or reallocate state appropriations — probably away from higher education — to make up the difference. Even if only some of Levine’s assumptions about these cuts pan out, they have the potential to cause long-term, substantial harm to the multiple missions of the nation’s leading colleges and universities. As Levine concludes, “They will hamper the investments these colleges make in the leaders of our next generation. Advances in medicine, science, and technology will slow. The negative effect on economic activity will be substantial. And the economic opportunity that these institutions offer to lower-income students will be limited.” Follow me on Twitter. Editorial StandardsForbes Accolades