Free Republic

How Harvard's Investing Superstars Crashed Bernard Condon and Nathan Vardi 02.20.09, 11:20 PM ET Stocks were tumbling last fall as the new school year began, but at Harvard University, it was as if the boom had never ended. Workers were digging across the river from Harvard's Cambridge, Mass., home, the start of a grand expansion that was to eventually almost double the size of the university. Budgets were plump, and students from middle class families were getting big tuition breaks under an ambitious new financial aid program. The lavish spending was made possible by the earnings from Harvard's $36.9 billion...

Harvard letter on its endowment /snip Harvard Management Company, using standard industry practices for valuing assets, has calculated investment losses of approximately 22 percent from July 1 through October 31. Yet even that sobering figure is unlikely to capture the full extent of actual losses for this period, because it does not reflect fully updated valuations in certain externally managed asset classes, most notably private equity and real estate. HMC expects that as we receive more comprehensive valuations in these asset classes from our external managers, the endowment will realize further declines in value. With those considerations in mind, and...