The move also marked the beginning of a new way to manage endowment funds. The arrangement has been a boon for the hedge-fund managers who received university endowment cash, but the benefits for the schools are trickier to parse. As Eaton put it in his book, universities directed funds to "wherever those allocations would generate the largest further investment returns." Eaton estimated in 2017 that tax breaks for university endowments cost federal coffers up to $19 billion a year. As the influence of billionaires and hedge-fund managers has grown, universities have moved further away from their ultimate goal: educating people.

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