Yale’s endowment in the mid-70s was somewhere around $600 million. It wasn’t a bad endowment for that time period, but there were more than a few endowments that were larger.
@HydeSnark is absolutely right that the debt was a conscious choice by the current administration. It wanted to take advantage of historically low interest rates, and it didn’t want to do a capital campaign in the middle of the Great Recession. Plus, they thought the capital campaign would go better if they could point to all the beautiful new buildings and the gaudy USNWR rating for the college (plus its never-before-seen popularity). We’ll know when the current campaign ends whether that was a smart gamble or not. An interim bond rating downgrade at the end of the cycle, with absolute interest rates at rock bottom, is hardly the end of the world.
Are we going to wring our hands about debt-financed expansion here, too? Hasn’t the endowment return far exceeded the interest rate on the debt in recent years, providing some basic vindication for borrowing vs. spending endowment to do long-overdue upgrades to the university’s facilities?