Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Harvard's endowment

An article in the Huffington Post notes that in the past four months Harvard's endowment has lost $8 billion--which represents a slim 22% of the total they've got socked away in their mattresses. My question is, how does that compare to the entire annual budget of the Cal State system, with its 23 campuses, 450,000 students and 47,000 faculty (among which number several participants in this blog). If I'm reading it right, 7.6 billion is what we're getting for next year.

10 comments:

Traductor said...

Well, exactly. They spend the interest from the endowment. Of course they've been around since the 17th century, so they've had time to sock it away. On the other hand I can't imagine that all the CSUs together can compete with the affluence of the Harvard alumni base.

Dave said...

Life's not fair. Lyon's endowment hovers around 50 mil. It sure would be nice to have a few more million.

Dave said...

Of course this is the value of the endowment and not real dollars. Their endowment as well as ours could be worth more over time. Is anyone else fed up with the lack of responsibility across all sectors over these corporate bailouts?

Mike said...

I would be nice to have an endowment, period.

Kent said...

Is it fair to say that we like our universities like our women: well-endowed?

Traductor said...

Sooner or later somebody was going there...

Kent said...

Sorry it had to be me. I swear I didn't post the original post with that in mind.

Traductor said...

As Groucho Marx used to say: "Get your mind out of the gutter - there isn't room there for the both of us."

Shandy said...

Mike, regarding your desire for an endowment, check the trash can of your email account and I'm sure you'll find more than a few discarded spam ads promising just that.

Mike said...

Some endowments are more desirable than others, I suppose.