<p>For another cause in his anti-higher education crusade.</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. Senator Questions Whether College Presidents Should Serve on Corporate Boards - Chronicle.com](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=5507&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en]U.S”>http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=5507&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en)</p>
<p>Basically, the really large endowments are hedge funds and the slightly smaller ones invest in hedge funds. Like all of the othr hedge funds, which are unregulated, these college endowment funds not only contributed to the stock market bubble but also hastened and depened the collapse by short selling in an attempt to recoup losses. College endowments are now selling off the most liquid of investments, at the bottom, to pay operating commitments (including their salaries,) and to pay capital calls on the illiquid ones. They are also seeking to dump the illiquid investments at huge losses.</p>
<p>Everyone would have been much better off if they had invested conservatively and responsibly and actually spent more put of their endowments instead of hoarding them. But too many of these college bureacrats used the temporary “increases” in the gross amount of their endowmwnts to justify increasing their own salaries and staffs.</p>
<p>So, in attempting to force colleges to spend more from their endowments, instead of running them as hedge funds, Grassley was right.</p>