My sources...
- Thread starter spider23
- Start date
The way I see it, if you can't use a tiny fraction of $2.5 billion to help out employees and students during a world pandemic in which the government mandated closures of sporting events and schools; then I will lose a lot of respect that I have for my school. Especially if they are laying off workers and cutting scholarships.
Greed....one of the 7 Deadly Sins.
Greed....one of the 7 Deadly Sins.
That endowment ain't $2.5 billion anymore. I saw a mention that Bucknell's lost $150 million, and ours was three times theirs to start with.
There's no doubt we have more resources than many other schools, but this is a bad situation. Real bad. A lot of minor sports all over the country are sweating, and multi-million dollar coaching contracts at this time in any sport will raise even more eyebrows than usual.
There's no doubt we have more resources than many other schools, but this is a bad situation. Real bad. A lot of minor sports all over the country are sweating, and multi-million dollar coaching contracts at this time in any sport will raise even more eyebrows than usual.
I'm sure our endowment took a hit, but the endowment is a long term funding mechanism. They will ride out the storm and it will recover in time. Agree with Rick, our endowment allows us to do things that very few universities are able to do, I would hope that we could pop into that during this time to protect university jobs if that is needed.
The university’s investments have lost tons of value in this. They refunded nearly half of the room and board fees to students for this semester, yet they’re continuing to pay all employees at least through the end of the school year.
They’ve already taken a hit, but there’s still significant uncertainty for next year. Will they hit their target class size for next year, given some may back out and want to stay closer to home or maybe defer a year? Fortunately the May 1 deadline isn’t here yet, so they’ll have time to see how things are rolling in and work from the wait list, but still lots of uncertainty. We don’t rely on international students to the extent that some schools do, but we have quite a few, and how many of them are rethinking their plans?
Yes, we’re in better shape than most, but even for us it’s not good. I know folks on campus are wondering where the cuts are going to come from for next year.
They’ve already taken a hit, but there’s still significant uncertainty for next year. Will they hit their target class size for next year, given some may back out and want to stay closer to home or maybe defer a year? Fortunately the May 1 deadline isn’t here yet, so they’ll have time to see how things are rolling in and work from the wait list, but still lots of uncertainty. We don’t rely on international students to the extent that some schools do, but we have quite a few, and how many of them are rethinking their plans?
Yes, we’re in better shape than most, but even for us it’s not good. I know folks on campus are wondering where the cuts are going to come from for next year.
Good interview with Yurachek at Arkansas...anticipating 5-15% revenue reduction for athletics. Looking at impacts to personnel and facility projects, but not planning to axe any sports. Of course they’re starting from the high bar of the SEC funding levels.
https://247sports.com/Article/Arkan...-COVID-19-coronavirus-pandemic-SEC-145651346/
https://247sports.com/Article/Arkan...-COVID-19-coronavirus-pandemic-SEC-145651346/
We couldn't use the endowment to build the football stadium or pay for the Mooney contract, so why do you think it will be used now? The endowment does 2 main things. 1) Helps fund some key operations/programs in the University - including tuition assistance for our so called need blind admissions. 2) Its a measuring stick with other elite schools. The bigger your endowment, the better school you must be. Just take a look at the Ivy league schools - Princeton has nearly 25 billion and Harvard is around 41 billion (all pre pandemic numbers).
Expect some jobs to be lossed at UR, or some employees to be furloughed. Maybe even some early retirements for some. I would also expect admissions to drop some as well. Hopefully sports don't cut - but I wouldn't put it pass our administration in doing that.
Expect some jobs to be lossed at UR, or some employees to be furloughed. Maybe even some early retirements for some. I would also expect admissions to drop some as well. Hopefully sports don't cut - but I wouldn't put it pass our administration in doing that.
It's a great article. Odd nobody has retweeted it with "Say it a little louder......just in case they didn't hear it."
-John Hardt, April 9, 2020
Last edited:
I'd be curious to know whether this year we netted more from football or basketball. I assume basketball, and maybe that's the case most years. My very crude assumption of average ticket price actually paid per person would give a slight edge to football (average paid ticket price is a lot higher), but factor in all the expenses associated with football and it's probably close to a wash or tilts toward basketball slightly. I could be way off though.
room and board is like $13k per year per student. assuming they refund half this semester, that's $3,250 per student or less than $1M. really shouldn't be a big issue for UR. that's a rounding error. our endowment (separate issue I understand) goes up or down more than that in an average day.
lol. woops! picked a bad week to stop drinking cough syrup.Spiderman = not a math major
Speaking of the endowment, ours has been lagging, and I'm not sure why. In fiscal 2019, it only gained 0.25%, compared to an average 5.9% gain for schools with at least a billion dollars.
With the much lower investment return last year, UR's overall assets grew by only $10.8 million, compared to $157 million in the previous year.
Did we have a bad mix of investments, or a couple of big individual losses dragging things down? Time to bring back Srini at all costs?
With the much lower investment return last year, UR's overall assets grew by only $10.8 million, compared to $157 million in the previous year.
Did we have a bad mix of investments, or a couple of big individual losses dragging things down? Time to bring back Srini at all costs?
SF, hell Paul Queally backed 8 years of mooney mediocrity. Is he helping manage the endowment too??
Personally - I don't want Mooney or other coaches forfeiting salaries at their schools. I think it sets a bad precedent and puts the coaches in even more control as they not only become an employee of a school but a major donor. Then when it comes time to make a difficult decision to fire or get rid of a coach - the school will have this hanging over their heads - should we fire the guy, who 2-3 years ago gave back a portion or all of his salary to help the school in a tough time? It would be like cutting off a million dollar donor.
I am friendly with one of our managers. I saw him recently and he told me that we have been sitting on 9% cash, so we may not fall as far as others this year.
Was told separately that UR refunded more than $5MM in room and board fees.
Your two points:
1) "tuition assistance"...So that's pretty much the school paying itself?
2) "measuring stick"...So it's a status symbol?
And here I just got another email requesting a donation.
If "pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered", I think we are about to find out that higher education in America has really become a hog.
agree, but would change "has really become" to "has been for years"
What you are going to find out is that some schools will be struggling to survive as we come out of this crisis, especially schools heavily dependent on state resources. Funding will be greatly reduced due to falling state tax revenues and enrollment is likely to take a significant hit as families are under stress. Those schools with high international student enrollment will not be able to retain those students, at least for a while, due to travel restrictions. Your perception of endowments is way off. Very few schools have multi-billion dollar endowments. Endowments are independent entities from the schools, and the funding is generally used to provide scholarship assistance to students and is not the school paying itself. The students get the benefit and the need has never been greater. Endowments are typically comprised of individual endowed scholarships with stipulations on how the money is to be spent and most schools have an annual spending threshold of 4%-5% of the principal. Endowments have a delicate balancing act of growing the corpus and yet not taking on too much risk in the event of crises like this or '08 in order to continue to annually pay scholarships. Sitting on 9% cash is not uncommon and can be used to take advantage of market dips or even troughs plus required payouts. For its size, UR is extremely fortunate to have a $2.5 billion endowment which can be traced back to the Robins gift and very good investment management. Even with an endowment of that size, it will be challenging for all schools to fill the desired enrollment in this economic environment plus a shrinking demographic of college-age kids. It is highly competitive getting students to attend and UR's reputation and quality will sustain it, but other schools with lesser means will be challenged.
i dont understand. We have billion dollars but we are worried about cost.
I disagree on this one. Here is an article from Jan. 2019 ranking 800 schools by Endowment. At the time 106 schools had over 1 Billion dollars. 145 schools have over 750 Million. And then 191 have over 500 million in endowment.
Not sure at what cutoff you say is a "healthy" size - but I think more schools than you think have a healthy size endowment.
I agree - schools will suffer with lack of international students and families who have loss jobs and can no longer afford college. And of course - state schools who rely on state funds will have to adapt as well with a loss of revenue. I expect UR will be better off than most - but I think this pandemic will have schools scrambling to boost endowments and reserves for the next emergency that hits in the future.
Coach, UR higher-ups actions over the years tells us for the most part sports results don't really matter. They haven't gone all in with their best national showpiece/ advertising one, b-ball, to bring to the light how special is U of R in it's entirety! We aren't talking about LaSalle or even St Joe's where money budgeting is a necessity.
I believe that in 2017 there were 23 Private Institutions with more than 500 students and more than 1.5 Billion in endowment. So relatively few by the that number if correct.
I also believe only 11 of those have Division I sports. 5 are Ivy.
The other six are -
Notre Dame
Duke
Stanford
Northwestern
Rice & Richmond
Last edited:
The latest NACUBO endowments studies are here:
https://www.nacubo.org/research/2019/nacubo-tiaa-study-of-endowments
All eight Ivies have endowments well over that $1.5 billion benchmark. Brown is the "poorest" at just under $4 billion.
Other private D-I schools over $1.5 billion: Stanford, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, Vandy, USC, BC, Richmond, BU, Georgetown, GW, TCU, SMU, and Liberty.
https://www.nacubo.org/research/2019/nacubo-tiaa-study-of-endowments
All eight Ivies have endowments well over that $1.5 billion benchmark. Brown is the "poorest" at just under $4 billion.
Other private D-I schools over $1.5 billion: Stanford, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, Vandy, USC, BC, Richmond, BU, Georgetown, GW, TCU, SMU, and Liberty.
Not sure why the Congressional Research Services that I was referencing, didn't consider Cornell, Columbia, Brown, Vandy, USC, or BC as private...
All were listed in the overall Top 100 Endowments at the end of 2017, but not in the private section.
Part of Cornell is public, as it is New York State's land-grant school. That may account for its omission.
Hopefully that means a more conservative investment strategy that is doing better (less badly?) than the others in the current environment.
Yes. Should hope and expect that a laggard the last few years would be doing far better than peers this year.
The performance for the endowment fund has lagged for more than 2 years. Last time I looked it was weak for at least the past 5 years and possibly longer. I would not consider the asset allocation conservative. My guess is we are doing poorly relative to peers. Although, I don't think any of this has any impact on the basketball program.
Last edited:
I went back as far as 2005 and compared our performance to the average performance of both $1B+ schools and all schools. In good years and bad, we've lagged the $1B+ average every year since 2011.
We've lagged the overall average every year but one since 2011...we beat it in 2015 by a tenth of a point. Prior to 2011, we generally outperformed both averages.
Pulavarti left at the end of the 2012 fiscal year.
2019
UR: 0.25%
$1B+: 5.9%
All: 5.3%
2018
UR: 5.8%
$1B+: 9.7%
All: 8.2%
2017
UR: 8.4%
$1B+: 12.9%
All: 12.2%
2016
UR: -7.7%
$1B+: -1.9%
All: -1.9%
2015
UR: 2.5%
$1B+: 4.3%
All: 2.4%
2014
UR: 14.3%
$1B+: 16.5%
All: 15.5%
2013
UR: 8.3%
$1B+: 11.7%
All: 11.7%
2012
UR: -0.5%
$1B+: 0.8%
All: -0.3%
2011
UR: 16.2%
$1B+: 20.1%
All: 19.2%
2010
UR: 13.9%
$1B+: 12.2%
All: 11.9%
2009
UR: -16.8%
$1B+: -20.5%
All: -18.7%
2008
UR: 3.0%
$1B+: 0.6%
All: -3.0%
2007
UR: 15.4%
$1B+: 21.3%
All: 17.2%
2006
UR: 14.9%
$1B+: 15.2%
All: 10.7%
2005
UR: 9.4%
$1B+: 13.8%
All: 9.3%
We've lagged the overall average every year but one since 2011...we beat it in 2015 by a tenth of a point. Prior to 2011, we generally outperformed both averages.
Pulavarti left at the end of the 2012 fiscal year.
2019
UR: 0.25%
$1B+: 5.9%
All: 5.3%
2018
UR: 5.8%
$1B+: 9.7%
All: 8.2%
2017
UR: 8.4%
$1B+: 12.9%
All: 12.2%
2016
UR: -7.7%
$1B+: -1.9%
All: -1.9%
2015
UR: 2.5%
$1B+: 4.3%
All: 2.4%
2014
UR: 14.3%
$1B+: 16.5%
All: 15.5%
2013
UR: 8.3%
$1B+: 11.7%
All: 11.7%
2012
UR: -0.5%
$1B+: 0.8%
All: -0.3%
2011
UR: 16.2%
$1B+: 20.1%
All: 19.2%
2010
UR: 13.9%
$1B+: 12.2%
All: 11.9%
2009
UR: -16.8%
$1B+: -20.5%
All: -18.7%
2008
UR: 3.0%
$1B+: 0.6%
All: -3.0%
2007
UR: 15.4%
$1B+: 21.3%
All: 17.2%
2006
UR: 14.9%
$1B+: 15.2%
All: 10.7%
2005
UR: 9.4%
$1B+: 13.8%
All: 9.3%
