As 2022 draws to its close, several colleges – both public and private – are coming to terms with a grim financial future that has caused them either to announce their upcoming closure or warn that they face impending peril.
In 2016, Harvard had bad news to share in its annual financial report: Its endowment value had dropped nearly $2 billion. The report, released that November, detailed the endowment’s lackluster returns by disclosing how the Harvard Management Company performed in a variety of asset categories against internal and external benchmarks.
Johns Hopkins University’s endowment woes are not unusual. Endowments across the country lost a median 10.2% of their value, according to a national study.
The dual outcomes of saving the world and generating excess returns has been made harder to deliver because of ESG scoring in emerging markets a senior Aegon portfolio manager has said.
Climate-minded academics called on a United Nations-backed group to sanction financial services firm TIAA unless it improves its environmental record, highlighting the divide between nonprofits moving away from fossil fuels and big investors sticking with oil and gas stocks.