Official financial segments often reflect bureaucracy, not true business economics. By creating a 'Shadow P&L' through deductive analysis, investors can uncover massive hidden costs in non-core initiatives, as ValueAct did with Microsoft's hardware divisions.

Elite universities with massive endowments and shrinking acceptance rates are betraying their public service mission. By failing to expand enrollment, they function more like exclusive 'hedge funds offering classes' that manufacture scarcity to protect their brand prestige, rather than educational institutions aiming to maximize societal impact.

A business school professor's expertise is validated by the free market, not just the university. If they are truly skilled, they should command a seven-figure income from external opportunities like books, speaking, and consulting. Their university salary should only represent a small fraction (15-20%) of their total earnings.

Programs like the Thiel Fellowship are rare because of the asymmetric risk to a sponsor's reputation. If one sponsored individual fails spectacularly, the sponsor gets significant negative press. In contrast, when a university graduate fails, the institution absorbs the blame, making large donations a safer form of patronage.

OpenAI's non-profit parent retains a 26% stake (worth $130B) in its for-profit arm. This novel structure allows the organization to leverage commercial success to generate massive, long-term funding for its original, non-commercial mission, creating a powerful, self-sustaining philanthropic engine.

To fix the student debt crisis, universities should be financially on the hook for the first portion of any loan default (e.g., $20,000). This "first loss" position would compel them to underwrite the economic viability of their own degrees, creating a powerful market check against pushing students into overpriced and low-value programs.

Palantir is challenging elite academia with its Fall Fellowship, which pays 18-year-olds instead of charging tuition. The program recruits top students who would otherwise attend Harvard or Yale, offering performance reviews instead of grades and real-world national security projects instead of classes, representing a direct corporate alternative to university education.

The modern college football landscape, flush with cash from NIL deals, player transfers, and expanded playoffs, has created immense pressure to win immediately. This financial intensification means athletic programs have less patience for losing seasons, leading to record-breaking buyouts for underperforming coaches.

There is a significant hypocrisy in elite university admissions. While affirmative action for historically disadvantaged groups is highly controversial, these same institutions give equal or larger admissions breaks to athletes in niche, wealthy sports like fencing and rowing, a practice that receives far less public scrutiny.