Harvard endowment leads others down
Harvard University suffered the largest decline in endowment funds of any major US college last year, as the financial crisis crippled the sophisticated but risky investment models that in prior years have made it the biggest and often best-performing endowment.
The total value of Harvard’s endowment fell nearly 30 percent in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009, to $25.7 billion, according to a national survey of college and university funds released today. Much of that decline is from investment losses - 27 percent; the fund’s balance also went down because the university needed to spend money on school programs. The Yale University endowment, the nation’s second-largest, dropped 28.6 percent, to $16.3 billion, while Stanford University’s fell 26.7 percent to $12.6 billion. The average drop for endowments across the country was 23 percent, based on a survey of 842 colleges and universities by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and Commonfund, an investment firm for endowments.
Yes, all the Ivies are hard up. They find Saudi money irresistible (not that they were necessarily going to resist in the first place!).
That’s really interesting because it’s all those Universities that got stimulus money.