The Paper Trail

Trouble for Big Ten Endowments

By Alison Go

February 12, 2009 RSS Feed Print

If I had infinite amounts of time, I would aggregate endowment info from several college conferences and make pretty graphs (after the jump). Luckily the Penn Staters from Onward State did it for me, at least for the Big Ten.

What we see here is that Northwestern and Michigan both have huge endowments, and the largest losses in sheer amount.

But when you look at percentage loss, Northwestern actually lost the least and currently has the largest endowment, while Iowa lost the most and has the smallest endowment. Oh this crazy/unfair world we live in. The middle of the pack doesn't reveal much rhyme or reason.

Graphics courtesy of Onward State.

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colleges

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physicaleducation

bobygr8 of CA 2:33PM February 15, 2009

Dear Alison,

So as these are non-profits, the question becomes what was lost and how was it lost. If the value are based on reduced values of stocks, this is bad, but you still have the same assets, it is not so bad.

If the money was lost due to a Ponzi scheme, then this is really money lost.

One thing nobody talks about, is the people that we invest our money have a duty to inform us of the risk, and if it is a Ponzi type of issue, then the people that did the investment should be held to made responsible.

Mark Thompson of CA 3:53PM February 13, 2009

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