2008 Woodie Awards
Video related to this article is available below.Issue date: 10/7/08 Section: News
Perspective | U. stays hush over endowment specifics
Alyssa Schwenk
How much do you really know about Penn's endowment?
It's big, though not as big as Harvard's or Yale's. But, even after a 3.9-percent drop leaving it at $6.3 billion, it's more money than most students will ever see. And it's heavily invested in a variety of "asset classes."
But invested in what?
For a number of reasons, Penn and most other universities do not disclose the specifics of their investments. Whether to maintain a competitive edge or for legal reasons, most information remains tucked away in confidential files.
For some students, however, this privacy is disconcerting, and with bagels and coffee in hand, representatives from schools across the country gathered in Huntsman Hall this weekend to discuss issues related to endowment transparency and how to get their schools to open up.
Tell us your secrets…
Organized by the student-activist group the Responsible Endowments Coalition, the conference aimed to help students learn more about schools' investment strategies. It also seeks to brainstorm ways to use the $400 billion that universities collectively invest through their endowments in responsible and socially mindful ways.
But students were united by a common problem: Due to a combination of legal limitations and strategic decisions, most schools give students only bare-bones information about investments. Even at schools with relatively transparent endowments, there are limitations to what information is accessible.
As campus constituents, students "are the ones that the endowment is directed to benefit. You have a right to know … who is funding your education," Morgan Simon, the organization's executive director, said in an interview before the conference.
Gaining access to schools' investments, though, isn't as simple as running a Google search or even searching public records. Universities manage millions or billions of dollars and consider their investments a trade secret. Endowments are designed to sustain the university's funds in perpetuity, and keeping the latest, hottest opportunity close is a way to maintain a competitive edge.
It's big, though not as big as Harvard's or Yale's. But, even after a 3.9-percent drop leaving it at $6.3 billion, it's more money than most students will ever see. And it's heavily invested in a variety of "asset classes."
But invested in what?
For a number of reasons, Penn and most other universities do not disclose the specifics of their investments. Whether to maintain a competitive edge or for legal reasons, most information remains tucked away in confidential files.
For some students, however, this privacy is disconcerting, and with bagels and coffee in hand, representatives from schools across the country gathered in Huntsman Hall this weekend to discuss issues related to endowment transparency and how to get their schools to open up.
Tell us your secrets…
Organized by the student-activist group the Responsible Endowments Coalition, the conference aimed to help students learn more about schools' investment strategies. It also seeks to brainstorm ways to use the $400 billion that universities collectively invest through their endowments in responsible and socially mindful ways.
But students were united by a common problem: Due to a combination of legal limitations and strategic decisions, most schools give students only bare-bones information about investments. Even at schools with relatively transparent endowments, there are limitations to what information is accessible.
As campus constituents, students "are the ones that the endowment is directed to benefit. You have a right to know … who is funding your education," Morgan Simon, the organization's executive director, said in an interview before the conference.
Gaining access to schools' investments, though, isn't as simple as running a Google search or even searching public records. Universities manage millions or billions of dollars and consider their investments a trade secret. Endowments are designed to sustain the university's funds in perpetuity, and keeping the latest, hottest opportunity close is a way to maintain a competitive edge.
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