Stock Crash Costs Ivy Schools Big Bucks

Around the Ivy League, the value of universities' endowments suffered losses of at least $40 million each in the wake of the devastating stock market crash of October 19, officials said this week.

Although the universities contacted said they had anticipated the decline and diversified their holdings out of stocks, they all lost between $40 and $80 million in the crash.

In preparation for the crash, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton all implemented the same investment strategy, liquidating their stocks.

"We had 55 percent of our funds in stocks at the time of the correction. We had been selling stocks since the end of January." said Jim Sanderson, Cornell's chief investment officer.

"We've been selling for about a year on the advice of the chairman of our investment board," said Philip Yarmolyck, an investment analyst at the University of Pennsylvania. "He was expecting this correction so we were pretty well prepared. By and large, we came out of it as well as can be expected," he said.

Unlike University of Pennsylvania and Cornell officials, the president of Princeton University's Investment Company, Dennis Sullivan, said that his university did not see the crash coming, though it was fortunate enough to liquidate many of its stocks.

"We had made a major shift away from equity to short term investments for a number of considerations. We were very lucky. I can't say that we were seers and saw this coming. No one saw this coming," Sullivan said.

But Dartmouth, which Vice-President and Treasurer Robert Field said lost less than 10 percent of its $600 million endowment in the crash, may have been the smartest of all the Ivies.

"We were concerned about the level of the stock market for over a year. We put in a portfolio plan to insure us," Field said. "We did not liquidate our stocks, we were selling short," he said.

"Our strategy beforehand was conservative because the feeling was that there would be a correction," said Assistant for Endowment Operations and Gifts at Brown University, Ed Maharay. "During the course of the year we turned to bonds from equities because bonds would give us a higher return if there was a recession," he said.

Despite differences in investment strategy, all the universities agree that their greatest concern at the moment is the future of endowment gifts.

"If your net worth suddenly dropped 50 percent, you might be reluctant to give your alma mater a few million dollars this Christmas," said Cornell's Sanderson.