How did Columbia end up so poor?

admissionsgeek
Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:50:45 +0000

this is a weird post full with wild speculations.

i think that beyond what cowboydan posted, we all know about 1960s (both pre and especially post 68) were tough times for the uni. before that the uni has the largest endowment with harvard. the other story is how rapid endowments have grown since 1980 and a lot of this is ‘artificial’ value just as you would note pretty absurd rises in other assets. columbia didn’t catch onto that wave until the 90s and were not posting gains equal to its peers until the '00s. i think a lot of it has to do with fundamental differences in what colleges believed were teh importance of real estate (think of columbia as the mercantilist of today) and more illiquid assets. Harvard had an endowment of about $1B in 1981! Can you believe that? That’s the real story here for me.

and i was looking for where columbia writes this caveat on its endowment profile, but it notes that because real estate assets (which columbia continues to have a lot) are difficult to quantify (especially in new york) that the value used is often times more conservative than the actual value. columbia might want to say hey we are sitting on $10B in land, but if for some reason the bubble really breaks and nyc goes to pre-1985 prices (hell pre-1940 prices) then it would significantly overstate the actual value and possible put the investment portfolio in bankruptcy.

other folks that hold a lot of land in investments (yale for instance) note a similar problem in quantifying and also quantifying the loss. [Yale Endowment Drops…How Much? : Columbia Journalism Review](Yale Endowment Drops...How Much? - Columbia Journalism Review).

cdz - it makes sense to you, but that is not true. columbia’s budget annually is about even with most universities. and endowment payoff doesn’t increase just because you have more students, it usually stays constant regardless of size of school populations. it is inherently a management and giving question (that columbia has only recently begun to correct and has done a pretty good job catching up).

catbossa - that makes no sense whatsoever. i mean whatsoever. even if part of what you are saying is true, i know for sure no one in that office was fired (especially for not doing some job).