On Sat, 06 Nov 2010 17:43:43 -0700, Christopher Green wrote: >Pardon me. That should have been $27.6 BILLION.
On Nov 6, 2010, at 6:26 PM, "Christopher D. Green" <chri...@yorku.ca> wrote: > No Canadian (or British or Australian or...) university is the equivalent of > Harvard. > No Canadian (or British or Australian or...) university has a $27.6M > endowment. (http://www.hmc.harvard.edu/) > Chris (went to McGill and U. Toronto) Green Excuse me for being exceedingly dense but I am having a hard time making the connection between the size of the Harvard's endowment, Larry Summers as Harvard's president, and Harvard's "exceptionalism" (in the sense of U.S. "exceptionalism"). As far a I know, Summers has no direct role in financial decisions regarding the endowment. It is managed by professional fund managers, one of whom was Mohamed El-Erian, currently co-inverstment chief of PIMCO; for more on the Harvard endowment, Mr. El-Erian, PIMCO, and the woes of managing an endowment, see: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=at0iuIc8_ga0 Quoting from the article which was published in May 2009: |Harvard, projecting an endowment loss of as much as 30 percent |this fiscal year, has frozen hiring and salaries and fired staff. Harvard |raised cash by issuing $2.5 billion in bonds in December after failing |to sell $1.5 billion in private- equity stakes. As the old saying goes, people are never quite as smart as they appear. That being said, Summers can kiss butt with the best of them as might be evident from the following story about Indian's Tata Group (no, not those "tatas") $50 million contribution to the Harvard business school. See: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Ahead-of-Obama-visit-Tatas-make-a-point-with-50-million-gift-to-Harvard/articleshow/6756752.cms Now, if one wants to argue that Harvard is exceptional because of its educational quality, it's intellectual capital, it's contributions to all manner of intellectual activities, well, I think one might have a better argument but one that is harder to qunatify. It is tempting to use a simple metric like size of endowment (which is like guys in the lockerroom comparing their you-know-what) but, I think, that is a questionable metric. Hell, even PIMCO is looking less spectacular after one realizes that it's success had less to do with its management (El-Erian and Gross notwithstanding) that larger market forces -- see the following for one view: http://seekingalpha.com/article/232465-the-new-normal-will-hit-pimco-the-hardest-of-all -Mike Palij New York University (#24 on the list provide by Jim Clark and only lost 15% of its endowment while Harvard lost 29.8%) m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=6282 or send a blank email to leave-6282-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
