Comments Elsewhere

You wouldn’t need to replace the entire operating budget for the school in order to convert it to a private University; you’d just need to replace the portion of revnue that comes from the government. According to the figures on p. 9, that’s $110,000,000/year, including both the money directly appropriated by Congress and money from government grants and contracts. There’s no reason why the hypothetical new private donors would have to replace the money that already comes in from student tuition, existing donations, investment income, book sales, etc. etc. etc. Still a lot of money, of course, but you can nudge the per-capita figures downward accordingly.