Valuable insights from Lynn O’Shaughnessy
a nationally recognized college expert.
Endowment
July 9, 2009
What's the Matter With Harvard?
I had lunch this week with a professor of medicine at Stanford University. Mercifully, the conversation didn’t dwell on his specialty (urology), but the professor did feel the need to gripe about Stanford’s endowment, which has cratered. In an attempt to cheer him up, I mentioned that Stanford’s endowment problem looks like a mosquito bite compared to Harvard University’s endowment’s...
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June 28, 2009
Troubles at Harvard
When my husband returned last week from a business trip on the East Coast, he brought home a copy of the Boston Globe that contained a story about layoffs at Harvard. Harvard is cutting loose 275 people and this comes on top of other recent cuts, including the postponement of an ambitious and very expensive campus expansion. If Harvard’s in...
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December 4, 2008
Harvard & Crocodile Tears
I had just woken up yesterday when my husband Bruce motioned me over to his laptop to show me a news bulletin about Harvard. The august institution had announced that thanks to the turmoil of the financial markets it had lost $8 billion of its $36.9 billion endowment since the summer. My husband’s boss, who happens to work in Cambridge,...
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