Where do colleges store their endowments?

College Search & Lists
1

<p>Many universities have endowments of over 2 billion dollars.</p>

<p>Where do they keep it safe? Various banks? Bonds? A gigantic gold vault???</p>

2

<p>Lots of places. Here’s a breakdown for Harvard:
<a href=“http://www.hmc.harvard.edu/org_chart/naa.html[/url]”>http://www.hmc.harvard.edu/org_chart/naa.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>Investments (including real estate), which is why so many endowments have lost value in the past year. Many Ivy League schools have lost ~30%.</p>

4

<p>well, losses in real estate are only temporary unless you need to sell the property. their “losses” will probably go back up with the market, right?</p>

5

<p>Good time to ask as it’s coming to light that many schools were pretty dumb and didn’t keep endowments as safe as they should have. Harvard in particular really blew it and will suffer severe cut backs. See thread on parent’s forum.</p>

6

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<p>Yes. But they have to keep the lights on until then (not a challenge for really rich schools, but for some it’s a problem).</p>

7

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Or the lights off. My alma mater (endowment in the billions) recently sent out an email requesting people to turn off unnecessary lights in an effort to cut down on electricity bills. ;)</p>

8

<p>Unfortunately a lot of schools put their endowments in hedge funds. My school got a $300 million gift from Boone Pickens, put it in a hedge fund, it went up to $800 million, and now it’s back down to $350 million, which thank God, is still positive return…barely.</p>

<p>Endowments are almost always invested, but they’re invested in a ton of different ways. Brigham Young University invested a lot of its endowment with Bernie Madoff, which was not good.</p>

9

<p>Hehe, I like to think of a big vault with UW’s logo on the outside. I imagine the provost swimming through a pool of gold coins ala Scrooge McDuck.</p>

10

<p>A gold filled vault would have been nice lately.</p>