Is It Time to Tax Harvard’s Endowment?

[der_kommissar]

not every valedictorian gets into an ivy league school because grades are not the sole criteria at a private school. their parents assuming they are telling the truth make too much
money to qualify for a tuition free scholarship, 60k t0 100k income. their financial affairs based upon some formula by the college might be a burden they don't wish to endure. then again this is the plight of the middle and upper middle class of the US. they pay and get squeezed by the government and in this case perhaps by private schools but much less so by the Ivy schools.

by the way, the US government should show financial acumen by running a surplus like Harvard instead of massive deficits burdening future generations.

Which would be perfectly acceptable if everybody, regardless of race and religion, were given equal opportunity for acceptance. The problem is that we know that if you happen to be the "wrong" race then you could be the school valedictorian and score in the 99th percentile on standardized tests and still have no shot...Meanwhile, if you are a part of the "right" race then you could gain admissions in the top 1/3rd of your class with mediocre test scores.

Of course if you are an outstanding athlete and a part of the right race, you can basically have it all...heck, look at Duke University...I'm sure that they've invented an entire department for the kids who have no business at such an outstanding school...I know for certain that U. of Michigan just created a major with no academic rigor for the "student athletes".

 

[der_kommissar]

I say the colleges should ban financial aid altogether - no more hand-wringing of which shade or impoverished background is most worthy of today's sensibilities. But then they would have to charge everyone the same price, and that price would have to be reasonable instead of massively inflated. It's like medical billing - they quote you $1000 for an aspirin and if you're lucky you can negotiate them down some, gee how generous of them!

Yep, about the time that private secondary schools and universities got into the "free tuition for the needy" game, the full freight cost for everyone else went parabolic. It's just a microcosm of everything else in our society (health care is a great example).

The irony is that with sky high tuitions at just about all private schools nowadays, they have never been in more desperate need of even MORE money. Basically, every private school now has an entire staff of "fundraisers" who spend every day of the year begging for donations. Tuition has doubled in the past 10-15 years and they always need more to pay for the bloated support staff and to give out a free education to the "right" candidates.

 

[Gibbersome]

I have been saying this for years. "Harvard is a hedge fund with a university attached to it,” IMO, their endowment needs to be used for the benefit of the university and its students. Why do they charge any tuition at all?

http://www.slate.com/articles/busin...-74646441&mc_cid=04a430f528&mc_eid=66ee9f08d3

Woooah, looks like somebody went to Yale.

Yes, it's a travesty that top schools have so much money and continue to collect lots more through their endowment...but most universities do put that money to good use such as research.

 

[volpunter]

Finally I get your real gripe you seem to have: people who are paid more than you think they are worth in return for the value they produce. Because after all they all still pay their income taxes...so you have no issues with overpaid athletes but an endowment portfolio manager who takes home 50 million USD per year because he produced 1.5 billion (numbers are fictitious) poses issues to you??? Not sure I follow your rational to be honest...it costs to attract the best.

I was not saying that education should be free. I'm saying that these schools are nonprofit institutions. They charge tuition to pay the expenses of the school. If they can get these fees covered by investing, they should lower or get rid of tuition. Imagine if some hedge fund right now started a school to be tax exempt. Then paid themselves big salaries. If it were done the other way around, they would not be issued tax exempt status on their for-profit activities.

 

[volpunter]

Not all top schools do that. My grad school class consisted of 80% mainland Chinese, 4 or 5 Americans , a few Europeans and 1 or two Latinos. All of my classmates I consider to this day to be of very high academic standard and intellect. I did not get the sense that a single student was out of place.

Also the financial assistance program was purely need based and available to anyone, regardless of country of residence or origin.

I went to Carnegie Mellon

Which would be perfectly acceptable if everybody, regardless of race and religion, were given equal opportunity for acceptance. The problem is that we know that if you happen to be the "wrong" race then you could be the school valedictorian and score in the 99th percentile on standardized tests and still have no shot...Meanwhile, if you are a part of the "right" race then you could gain admissions in the top 1/3rd of your class with mediocre test scores.

Of course if you are an outstanding athlete and a part of the right race, you can basically have it all...heck, look at Duke University...I'm sure that they've invented an entire department for the kids who have no business at such an outstanding school...I know for certain that U. of Michigan just created a major with no academic rigor for the "student athletes".

 

[rmorse]

Y

Woooah, looks like somebody went to Yale.

Yes, it's a travesty that top schools have so much money and continue to collect lots more through their endowment...but most universities do put that money to good use such as research.

yale? Not me. I was not a great student. I have a BS-MBA from NYU back when NYU's business school was easier to get into.

 

[Sig]

I say the colleges should ban financial aid altogether - no more hand-wringing of which shade or impoverished background is most worth of today's sensibilities. But then they would have to charge everyone the same price, and that price would have to be reasonable instead of massively inflated. It's like medical billing - they quote you $1000 for an aspirin and if you're lucky you can negotiate them down some, gee how generous of them!

Which would be perfectly acceptable if everybody, regardless of race and religion, were given equal opportunity for acceptance. The problem is that we know that if you happen to be the "wrong" race then you could be the school valedictorian and score in the 99th percentile on standardized tests and still have no shot...Meanwhile, if you are a part of the "right" race then you could gain admissions in the top 1/3rd of your class with mediocre test scores.

Of course if you are an outstanding athlete and a part of the right race, you can basically have it all...heck, look at Duke University...I'm sure that they've invented an entire department for the kids who have no business at such an outstanding school...I know for certain that U. of Michigan just created a major with no academic rigor for the "student athletes".

Maybe undergrad, although if you're talking a top university there are 20 equally qualified students representing every race for every spot. Remember there are over 35,000 valedictorians graduating in the U.S. every year, and as a "wrong race" white student I somehow managed to get into a good undergrad program even as a mere top 1/3 of my classer, although a pretty well rounded one which is what they really care about far more than grades or race.
There's pretty much a decision you make as a university, do you get your funding by being an athletic powerhouse or from a robust endowment. No question that those who decide on the first course have to sell their academic soul a little to achieve that. Since this thread is focused on those who've decided to go the endowment route, I'd say the vast majority of those schools haven't dropped academic rigor to achieve racial diversity; another point in favor of large endowments.
There was absolutely no unfair preference for black students (why not just come out and say what you mean by "right" race) in my grad school program, based on performance in school but probably more realistically achievement now 10 years out. If anything you might be tempted not to give the benefit of the doubt to the famous/alumni parents students rather than questioning my classmate who graduated magna cum laude with a BS in Electrical Engineering while playing varsity football for a top Pac-12 team in undergrad and happened to be black, for example. However, even most of those with famous parents worked twice as hard to ensure you knew they belonged there on their own merits.

 

[volpunter]

I second that, no racial discrimination at my school at all, either. Not a single black student in my grad school program at CMU and you could spot just a few across the whole campus. Asian students everywhere and the rest mostly Caucasian American ( across the whole student body).

Maybe undergrad, although if you're talking a top university there are 20 equally qualified students representing every race for every spot. Remember there are over 35,000 valedictorians graduating in the U.S. every year, and as a "wrong race" white student I somehow managed to get into a good undergrad program even as a mere top 1/3 of my classer, although a pretty well rounded one which is what they really care about far more than grades or race.
There's pretty much a decision you make as a university, do you get your funding by being an athletic powerhouse or from a robust endowment. No question that those who decide on the first course have to sell their academic soul a little to achieve that. Since this thread is focused on those who've decided to go the endowment route, I'd say the vast majority of those schools haven't dropped academic rigor to achieve racial diversity; another point in favor of large endowments.
There was absolutely no unfair preference for black students (why not just come out and say what you mean by "right" race) in my grad school program, based on performance in school but probably more realistically achievement now 10 years out. If anything you might be tempted not to give the benefit of the doubt to the famous/alumni parents students rather than questioning my classmate who graduated magna cum laude with a BS in Electrical Engineering while playing varsity football for a top Pac-12 team in undergrad and happened to be black, for example. However, even most of those with famous parents worked twice as hard to ensure you knew they belonged there on their own merits.

 

[dealmaker]

Harvard Endowment Books 5.8% Return for Fiscal 2015, Reaches Record $37.6B in Assets
Sep 22 2015 | 7:49pm ET

Harvard University’s endowment booked a 5.8% return in its 2015 fiscal year, helping bring the biggest fund of its kind to a record $37.6 billion in assets, up 3.3% year-over-year.

Harvard Management Company said in a letter on Tuesday that returns for the twelve months ended June 30 were driven primarily by above-average gains in equities, venture capital investments in technology and biotech, and real estate holdings.

However, the results lagged some of its peers. Bowdoin’s $1.4 billion endowment, for instance, posted a fiscal 2015 gain of 14.4%, assisted in part by the membership of billionaire investor and Bowdoin alum Stanley Druckenmiller on the school’s investment committee. The 2015 YTD median return for endowments and foundations with more than $500 million in assets under management this year is 3.6%, according to a Bloomberg article citing an estimate by Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

Stephen Blyth, who became CEO of Harvard Management Company in January, wrote in the letter that he believed the endowment’s asset allocation framework needed work, as well as issues such as investment decision-making and compensation.

"We have challenges ahead and much hard work to be done, but I believe we have gained significant traction in 2015," Blyth said. He added that after several years of dealing with the fallout from the global financial crisis, HMC was now in a better position to pursue its objectives.

In the letter, performance of various portfolio components was also described. For instance, Harvard Management Company's investments in U.S. stocks returned 12.4%, ahead of the broader market’s 7.2% gain, while private equity investments earned 11.8%. Real estate, meanwhile, knocked the ball out of the park with a 19.4% return, nearly twice the performance of its benchmark.

On the other hand, HMC lost money on emerging market and international equities and foreign equities, while its absolute return portfolio essentially broke even.