Given the size of the kinds of Federal bail-outs being discussed these days, Harvard University's endowment, almost $37 billion, by far the largest of any university in the world, sounds like chump change. But it is a staggeringly large endowment for a university and the interest alone accounted for 35% of the Harvard's annual operating budget. The previous statement is not quite accurate, we find out now. The endowment stood at $36.9 billion four months ago, the biggest decline in modern history of the institution. In the time since it has lost at least 22% of its value ($8 billion). The drop alone is bigger than the entire endowments of all but four other universities. Belts will be tightened at the venerable Cambridge digs. Apparently everything -- staffing, salaries, hiring -- is under scrutiny. The losses are on a par with market losses (S&P 500 fell 24.6%), and since this benchmark the S&P has taken another 12+% hit, so the announced Harvard losses are probably less than the current losses. Harvard financial planners envision a total 30% loss for the year (ending next June). The loss is double the next worse loss (1974), and in the 30 years since then the Harvard endowment has only gone negative 3 times, less than 3% each time. So this is a huge, huge loss and unlike anything Harvard has seen in modern times.
If Harvard is in trouble, you know other universities must also be hurting, but not necessarily hurting worse. The silver lining for universities with small endowments is that they won't be hurt as badly. But the signs of distress in higher education are now quite clear. Boston University was the first to announce a hiring freeze. After a space of about month it was followed by Cornell, then a number of others. With Harvard falling into line, it is clear the economy is really in the tank. But you knew that anyway.
The rest of us can't fire our family members so we have to dig into savings and Harvard is planning to do that, too, by increasing the "pay out" from their endowment. Like lots of developers (and make no mistake, Harvard is a huge real estate developer in Boston and Cambridge) they will be re-evaluating their capital projects. With any luck this will be good news for old and poor neighborhood residents who have been gradually squeezed out of Cambridge by Big Brother Harvard.
So what are Harvard's financial managers doing to protect the university? One things seems to be getting some money out of the market and into "cash." I don't know where the mattress is, but it better be pretty big.
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The other day, my sister sent me a brain dead e-mail from the institution where she is faculty. Not only is it freezing hiring for permanent positions funded by her university (not unreasonable), but it's freezing hiring for grant-funded positions (crazy)! That's right, even though the grant pays the entire salary and overhead, not to mention indirects, it's refusing to let PIs hire new personnel unless they go through some serious hoop jumping at the Dean's office.
I guess this means that Harvard's ridculous indirect rate (90%+ on some grants--double the level of many institutions) won't get any lower.
Orac: Our hiring freeze at first seemed to cover restricted funds (grants), too, but they quickly figured out that was really insane. But in a big university it often happens that not everyone is operating off the same page and stupid things get done or said by some people who haven't gotten the message or sometimes administrators who haven't thought it all out. I'm not surprised to hear it.
Rich: Indirects are set by federal auditors. Ours are 60+%. It's not really the institution's doing. They are being reimbursed for expenses paid out 18 months previously.
Indirects are negotiated rather than "set" and with some funders, Harvard somehow manages to charge 90+%. The 60+% is still in excess of a great many places. The scandal at Stanford in the 90s with DoD funds was a good esample of why one needs to be skeptical of what well-endowed institutions charge the federal govt and other funders. Sorry, but no one is going to feel much of your pain.
I always thought indirects were negotiated with the federal government institution by institution. If Harvard has a 90% indirect rate, that's utterly outrageous. Even 60% is, as Rich pointed out, higher than the average university. My current university gets %50.
Revere: I'd be happy to forward you a copy of the e-mail if you want to see some seriously burning stupidity.
Orac: Yes, they are institution by institution. I will check on Harvard's indirects, as I have never heard a 90+% figure for any institution. This may be urban legend in Harvard's case, but maybe not. But the 66% figure is not uncommon for private institutions, as they have a different mix of research, education and what state monies pay for. Many public universities have indirects in the 20+% range, vastly different than my institution. On the other hand, we also have an "off campus" rate of 26% if research is being conducted somewhere that makes no use of the physical plant that indirects are supporting (library, security, heat and light for the labs and research offices, etc.). Yes, send a copy of the email. It is always nice to see something even stupider than one's own institution, although it is a non-transitive property. We are quite capable of being stupider than another place on another matter when they are stupider than we are about something else.