A Sea Of Red

Interesting article that also highlights a bit of how they structure their endowment and plans to make it more transparent in the future.

Endowment, even after a hedgefund blowup (due to the current credit crunch fueled by the tranches and CDO's related to lending) that cost them $350M, they still returned positive due to some impressive risk allocation.

Interesting read for those who dig this kind of stuff:


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070821/bs_ ... dowment_dc

Harvard's endowment hits $34.9 billion

BOSTON (Reuters) - Harvard University, already America's richest university, said on Tuesday its endowment grew to a new high of $34.9 billion, boosted by bets on emerging markets, real estate and private equity.


Returns for fiscal 2007, which ended June 30, grew 23 percent, significantly above the 16.7 percent gain posted for 2006 and the 19.2 percent gain reported for 2005...

Very interesting and a solid model to follow in terms of endowment. That's a lot of money to play around with.

When you have that much you can take more risk. Most schools can't follow that model.

Maybe my math is a bit fuzzy, but with an endowment that big, shouldn't every student at Harvard be on a full ride just off of the interest?

I think they just like to watch it grow so they can be considered the "richest". It seems like doesn't actually do anything.

Innocent Bystander wrote:Maybe my math is a bit fuzzy, but with an endowment that big, shouldn't every student at Harvard be on a full ride just off of the interest?

A number of smaller schools operate in such a fashion. But it is my understanding that much of the moeny off interest is used in research projects.

In round numbers they can spend about $1.5 Billion a year from the endowment. Assuming a good portion goes to new buildings and research it is not quite enough to give everyone a free ride but everyone with under $80k income goes pretty much for free and up to $170k they get some grants. Why should the kids of the really rich go for free?