I’ve been getting behind lately, but I think a roundup of the last week or so is necessary.

President Marx sent out the campus-wide email and press statement:

College and university endowments across the country have been significantly affected by market volatility in recent weeks, and Amherst’s is no exception. Even with our relatively strong investment management, [...]

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In my last post, I linked to an Op-Ed by Amherst President Tony Marx in the LA Times.  In the piece, he argues against a proposed minimum spending rate on colleges’ endowment funds.  His points are especially compelling given the state of the market.  For the record, I stand in basic agreement with his reasoning.
However, [...]

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President Marx writes in the LA Times:
But if the state of the stock market is any indication, the era of hefty annual — or even positive — returns for college endowment funds is likely to be over, perhaps for quite some time. It’s a good thing that colleges have been allowed to tend to our [...]

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Some great investigative work by Jonathan “Thropedo” Thrope ‘10 in this week’s Student on Amherst’s endowment.  Our endowment has grown 4.6% from June 30, 2007 to June 30, 2008.  It’s a far cry from the obscene 27.8% return we took home last year, but considering the downturn of the economy it’s a good haul.  Of [...]

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…Tony doesn’t like the proposal to mandate a 5% annual spending of the endowment.
Check it out in the New York Times:
“We have an eight-to-one faculty ratio, we sit in a room and we talk for hours, that’s what we do,” [Marx] said. “It costs us $80,000 a year to educate each student.”
And according to Inside [...]

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More press, including a bunch of quotes from Pres. Marx.
Update: link has been corrected.

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Check out the interesting Op-Ed in today’s Times. Carroll Bogert, associate director of Human Rights Watch and Harvard ‘83, brings up a number of questions about the nature of endowments and how they should be structured. I think that there is a growing awareness of the power of endowments, and whether their tax-free [...]

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There are really no serious arguments as to why our endowment should not have more transparency or shareholder engagement. I’d like to see our endowment information readily (and electronically) accessible to the College community by the end of next semester. By this time next year, I want to see the formation of a committee dedicated to endowment management.

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