Endowment: #78

[DFW HOYA]

Down slightly from #77 last year, the endowment grew at a slower pace than its peers in 2005, reports The HOYA.

www.thehoya.com/news/021406/news2.cfm

[hilltopper2000]

I wish the Hoya would put this in context. In the mid-1990s GU ranked in the 50s in endowment size. It then began seriously fundraising and saw a bunch of other schools pass it up. Why this happened is obvious if you read between the line of this article:

“We understand that our endowment is a lot smaller than that of our academic competitors,” said Lawrence Kohard, chief investment officer for the university investment office. We are trying to implement an investment strategy very similar to what they are doing.”

Uh, so what were we doing for the last decade? I've never actually crunched the numbers for each school, but I'm pretty sure that GU has raised significantly more money over the last 10 years than each of the 27 schools that passed us in the rankings. The university really squandered an opportunity to solidify its position as a top institution and now has to play catch-up on a far more daunting level. The good news is, once we right the ship, more donors will be willing to donate more money.

[TrueHoyaBlue]

Well, Kochard is the first chief investment officer that Georgetown has had, and he was brought on about 2 years ago, so that may have been a sizeable hole in the operation in the previous decade.

[hilltopper2000]

Well yes, but that's really just a symptom of the problem. Why was GU 10 years behind the curve in hiring a CIO? I remember complaining about this when I was an undergrad. You didn't need a degree in university administration to see what other schools were doing and how we needed to operate. And yet, now, after all of this time has gone by finally they get it. So many of the financial problems the university now faces are of its own making and due largely to recent mistakes. This has been a source of frustration for me with GU for a long time. I'm just venting.

[TrueHoyaBlue]

Fair enough, I still vent every time I drive by the old Mount Vernon college. While I get Editeded about missed opportunities in the past, though, I am heartened to see some of the recent improvements that have been made in various parts of campus... even though many are long-overdue and will take a few years to generate the ideal effects.

[Jack]

hilltopper2000 said:

Uh, so what were we doing for the last decade? I've never actually crunched the numbers for each school, but I'm pretty sure that GU has raised significantly more money over the last 10 years than each of the 27 schools that passed us in the rankings. The university really squandered an opportunity to solidify its position as a top institution and now has to play catch-up on a far more daunting level. The good news is, once we right the ship, more donors will be willing to donate more money.

You must also keep in mind that a significant amount of money that has been raised is not going to endowment, but to current use for specific projects. I am not sure how that compares to other schools, but the fact that Georgetown recently completed a $1 billion campaign quite clearly did not lead to a $1 billion endowment.

[hilltopper2000]

As a freshman (one month into my time at GU) I asked Fr. O'Donovan why on God's green earth did he not snap up Mt. Vernon, which we actually owned for a short window. He patted me on the head (figuratively) and said, "Well, how would it look for Georgetown as a Catholic university to be shutting down another Catholic university. That's not our mission." His overriding concern was how it would read in the press and at cocktail parties. Well, I don't hear people ripping WG for shutting it down. And GU blew another golden opportunity. When people argue that GU should give back the prince's $20 million, I have this in the back of my head. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do unpopular things for the good of the university.

[hilltopper2000]

Jack - you are right, of course. A lot of the money raised has been spend through capital improvements and various current use need (read financial aid). But schools that have passed us, for instance Tufts and GW do not even raise half as much as GU in any given year and they have current use needs too. A good campus reporter should do a breakdown over the last ten years. All of the statistics are publicly available.

[watsonry]

The endowment situation (and fundraising in general) at GU is frustrating, but I think Kochard realizes what we need to be doing to get competitive and is implementing his strategy--unfortunately, we won't see the big payoff for a few years, but I think we are finally headed in the right direction....

[DFW HOYA]

In 2003, at the conclusion of the capital campaign, the endowment actually dropped $75 million. The "capital campaign" was a lot less capital-intensive then people thought.

"Georgetown’s endowment has decreased by 11.5 percent this past year, running parallel to a national downward trend, according to the Jan. 24 Chronicle of Higher Education....Georgetown’s decrease was significant compared to other top schools. Harvard University, which has the largest endowment of any college, only dropped by 2.7 percent. Fellow Jesuit school Boston College’s endowment dropped only 3.9 percent. "

www.thehoya.com/news/020403/news2.cfm

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

hilltopper2000 said:

I wish the Hoya would put this in context. In the mid-1990s GU ranked in the 50s in endowment size. It then began seriously fundraising and saw a bunch of other schools pass it up. Why this happened is obvious if you read between the line of this article:

“We understand that our endowment is a lot smaller than that of our academic competitors,” said Lawrence Kohard, chief investment officer for the university investment office. We are trying to implement an investment strategy very similar to what they are doing.”

Uh, so what were we doing for the last decade? I've never actually crunched the numbers for each school, but I'm pretty sure that GU has raised significantly more money over the last 10 years than each of the 27 schools that passed us in the rankings. The university really squandered an opportunity to solidify its position as a top institution and now has to play catch-up on a far more daunting level. The good news is, once we right the ship, more donors will be willing to donate more money.

Geez I get that we are not as well endowed as we were about 10 or 20 years ago - but what is the big deal? Doesn't that happen with age? And don't they have ways to fix this sort of thing?