How did Columbia end up so poor?

natsherman
Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:28:15 +0000

It sounds like the answer is poor or unlucky management of the assets at key periods in the past.

What’s sad is that if you look at the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, a very large percentage made their fortunes in NYC real estate. How Columbia managed to sit on top of all these assets and grossly underperform, well …

Someone once told me that in some respects, Columbia has suffered financially for its relative lack of anti-semitism historically. Located in a city flooded with immigrant Jews a century ago, Columbia (and Penn) opened its doors a little wider than many of its competitor schools. Rich NY WASPS were horrified that Columbia was becoming a “Jewish school” and became much more likely to sent their kids to Princeton and Yale, who took a much tougher stance against the growing herds of talented Jewish aspirants. That’s why names like Vanderbilt and Carnegie and Sterling are much more likely to be on buildings at HYP than at Columbia. Of course, this is all ancient history now.