Yale’s Endowment Down an Estimated 25%

The financial tsunami hits the Ivy League. Two weeks ago I noted Harvard University’s endowment is down 22% and falling. Today The Chronicle reports:

Yale University’s endowment has dropped an estimated 25 percent — a loss of about $6-billion — since June 30, creating a shortfall of $100-million in next year’s budget, President Richard C. Levin announced in a letter to the university today.

The endowment stood at $22.9-billion on June 30. By October 31 it had fallen by 25 percent, and it has continued to decline since then, Mr. Levin said. Investment income from the endowment makes up 44 percent of Yale’s annual budget.

Yale’s endowment performance closely follows those at other wealthy universities, including Harvard, but is of particular interest because many university endowments have copied the “Yale model” of investing. That model, devised by David F. Swensen, the university’s chief investment officer, has helped Yale earn annual returns as high as 28 percent.

The NYTimes says the drop is 13.4% in just the four months since June. Last week the Faculty Senate at Brandeis University asked professors to take a salary cut in order to preclude layoffs.

Princeton, meanwhile, made news for settling the legal battle over how closely it had to adhere to the terms of a gift the A&P grocery heirs gave that provides most of the financing for graduate programs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

I haven’t seen a public statement on the likely losses the Princeton endowment has incurred, but they’ve begun taking steps including delaying building projects, slowing faculty pay raises and severely limiting general discretionary spending.