Claremont McKenna Endowment Woes Echoed at Other Elite Schools

November 10, 2008

The Associated Press released an article today that discusses how schools like Cornell, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Brown are dealing with the current economic downswing.  The situation at other institutions echoes the e-mail President Gann sent out earlier today:

"[Harvard President] Faust warned in an e-mail to faculty, staff and students that "we must recognize that Harvard is not invulnerable to the seismic financial shocks in the larger world. Our own economic landscape has been significantly altered.""We need to be prepared to absorb unprecedented endowment losses and plan for a period of greater financial restraint," she said.Harvard's is the nation's largest university endowment and provides about a third of the annual operating budget. Faust said the school is looking at ways to cut spending and will review compensation costs, which account for nearly half of the budget."

The crisis is apparent at other schools as well:

"Dartmouth College has announced that it will cut spending after its endowment, which also makes up about a third of its budget, lost $220 million. That school's trustees blamed the loss on poor returns on stocks and bonds because of the Wall Street meltdown.Last week, Brown University announced a hiring freeze through January, and said it would review its capital budget to determine which projects could be delayed. Cornell University also recently announced a 90-day halt of construction projects and a pause on hiring staff members from outside the university through the end of March."