Harvard University’s endowment ranks second-to-last among Ivy League schools in annualized returns over the last 20 years after soaring success in the 1990s and early 2000s, according to a report.
Cornell, the Ithaca, NY-based school, is the only Ivy League university that has reported a lower 20-year annualized return than Harvard, according to Bloomberg News.
Yale topped the list of Ivies that have generated a significant rate of return over the last two decades. The New Haven, Conn., university’s 20-year annualized rate came in at just under 10.9%.
Princeton University’s endowment generated the second-highest returns over the last 20 years — 10.5%.
Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia and UPenn also came in ahead of Harvard.
Not only has Harvard fallen behind its Ivy League rivals, but its fund has lagged behind those of a majority of schools (60%) whose endowments exceed $5 billion, according to figures provided by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.
Harvard still has the largest endowment of any university in the country — $50.7 billion. But that sum is on the verge of being surpassed by the University of Texas.
By the end of fiscal year 2023, UT’s endowment had around $45 billion in assets under management.
Harvard’s significantly larger student body means that on a per capita basis, Yale ($40.7 billion) and Princeton ($34.1 billion) have larger endowments.
The University of Texas, which is one of the largest public university systems in the country, owns more than 2 million acres of land in Western Texas, enabling it to collect on royalties from oil and natural gas reserves.
With energy production having gone up significantly in the region over the past few years, the university has been able to net a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
While Harvard remains the wealthiest university in the world, its fund has been underperforming compared to its peers due to the revolving door of investment managers who have come and gone since the departure of longtime treasurer D. Ronald Daniel, according to Bloomberg.
Between 1989 and 2004, Daniel oversaw Harvard Management Co, the school’s in-house hedge fund charged with managing the endowment.
Under Daniel’s watch, HMC gained a reputation as one of the world’s leading investment firms. It grew Harvard’s endowment four-fold — quadrupling it in value from $4.7 billion to $22.6 billion.
Since Daniel’s tenure, however, HMC has gone through seven top executives, among them three interim appointments and two who served few than two years.
Despite shelling out around $800 million over the past 20 years to procure top flight investment talent, HMC has struggled to generate impressive returns.
According to Boston University finance expert Mark Williams, HMC has been beset by poor decisions, including ill-advised investments in assets whose value dropped as well as taking on risk just before market downturns.
“You just feel they’re playing catch-up ball,” Williams told Bloomberg News.
HMC provided a statement to Bloomberg News saying that it had a “singular focus” on generating risk-adjusted returns to fund the school’s operation.
“In recent years, HMC undertook dramatic changes to its investment model, organizational structure and portfolio,” endowment spokesperson Patrick McKiernan told Bloomberg News.
“Long-term investments naturally take time to be fully realized, but early indications show that the endowment is well-positioned to meet both the current and future needs of Harvard University.”
Daniel, 93, died last December at his home in Manhattan.
