In the case of public institutions of higher learning, there is no controversy: The people own the university and, through their elected representatives, pay for and approve its entire budget. Again, through their selected regents and overseers, the taxpayers adjudicate the laws of these universities.

But private universities, while different, are not really so different.

Take again Stanford as a typical example. It receives about $1.5 billion per year in federal taxpayer grants alone to its various faculty, labs, research centers, and programs.

Its annual budget exceeds $8 billion. If Stanford accepts such huge federal and state direct largess, do the taxpayers who provide it have some say about how and under what conditions their recipients use their money?

[The federal government certainly attaches strings to those benefits, although those are usually crafted by the Left. That is why a handful of colleges and universities refuse federal subsidies of any kind. Hillsdale is one of them, but there are others. — Ed]