[1550] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
MIT endowment...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard J. Barbalace)
Sun Jan 25 18:36:10 2004
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 18:12:23 -0500
From: "Richard J. Barbalace" <rjbarbal@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
There was a short note on the MIT endowment in the Globe today:
An annual survey of university endowments released last week gave the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology a dubious honor: It was the
richest university to lose money in the 2003 fiscal year. As the stock
market rebounded, the value of MIT's endowment dropped 4.2 percent, to
$5.1 billion, while Harvard's was up 9.8 percent, and numbers two and
three, Yale and Princeton, grew 4.9 percent. Three years of losses at
MIT, which has the nation's sixth-largest university endowment, have led
to hiring and salary freezes, a campus shutdown over winter break, and
plans to lay off about 200 staff. Executive vice president John R. Curry
attributed MIT's poor performance to its heavy reliance on venture
capital funds, which did spectacularly in the late 1990's, but have
dropped off since. Among the 10 largest endowments, MIT's ranked fourth
in performance from 1998 to 2003, and money managers haven't given up on
their investment strategy. ''It's always tough going through market
volatility, but all of us are very long-term investors, and we do come
through these patches,'' Curry said. They might also look for some tips
across the river: Last year Boston University's $620 million endowment
grew 7.2 percent.
From:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/025/learning/Tech_bust_hits_MIT_endowment+.shtml
It seems odd that other top universities are doing so much better with
their endowments. Perhaps MIT should simply track the "Harvard index."
+ R
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