<p>hey guys, ok i had read in certain threads that penn is expanding/extending its campus. what exactly is happening and why? links will be helpful.</p>
<p>thanks alot!</p>
<p>eastward bound to bridge the gap between penn and center city</p>
<p>and because tons of efforts are going on that need space - nanotech, hill square college house, etc.</p>
<p>[PennConnects</a> : <em>—</em>What Is Penn Connects](<a href=“Penn Connects : A Vision for the Future.”>Penn Connects : A Vision for the Future.)</p>
<p>There is the University’s own site on the matter. It’s called Penn Connects, and is a multi-decade, multi-billion dollar plan to expand the campus eastward to the river. The land was formerly used/wasted by the US Post Office as a giant surface parking lot for its vehicles.</p>
<p>The first and sexiest part (turning the parking lot into a great new park) is already underway and due to be completed in 2011, I believe.</p>
<p>niceee! thanks alot guys!</p>
<p>I hope they can afford it. Many schools got screwed over because of the financial crisis and had huge problems paying off debts; most top schools’ endowments are tied up in non-liquid assets (buildings etc.)… and Penn is actually tieing up more of its money in non-liquid assets. Makes one wonder what the financial directors are smoking these days.</p>
<p>^ Lobzz, a school’s endowment value does NOT include its own buildings or physical plant. To the extent an endowment includes buildings or real estate, those are INVESTMENT properties, not the buildings that make up the campus. Physical plant and endowment are two separate things.</p>
<p>Also, Penn is in the middle of a highly successful capital campaign (the “Making History” campaign) which, even in the midst of this recession, has managed to stay on or ahead of schedule by so far raising $2.68 billion of the $3.5 billion goal, with more than 2 years left to go:</p>
<p>[Penn</a> is Making History – every day | Penn : Making History](<a href=“http://www.makinghistory.upenn.edu/]Penn”>http://www.makinghistory.upenn.edu/)</p>
<p>The money raised in that capital campaign is targeted to fund both endowment growth AND physical plant expansion and improvement, among other things.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Penn is much less reliant on its endowment than most of its peers, funding a much smaller percentage of its annual budget from endowment income than do its peers.</p>
<p>Finally, under the circumstances, Penn’s endowment actually has been doing fairly well over the last couple of years, outperforming the endowments of most of its peers.</p>
<p>Surely you don’t think I’m that stupid. I meant Real Estate. But, true, I should have elaborated… What I meant was, why is penn investing in non-liquid assests at this time… thanks for the link; I assumed penn was going through trouble too… guess not.</p>
<p>Nope, don’t think you’re stupid. :)</p>
<p>Just clarifying that investing in real estate as part of endowment is NOT the same thing as “investing” (in the figurative sense) in campus buildings or physical plant. Real estate investments that are part of a school’s endowment would be things like shares of a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), office buildings, shopping centers, and other income-producing assets, as opposed to real estate owned directly by the school for its own use (i.e., its campus). No prudent school–including Penn–would view its own buildings or physical plant as part of or equivalent to its endowment which, again, is something completely different and separate.</p>
<p>Again, just wanted to reiterate that I was misunderstood because I meant that penn should not be using its endowment in investing in non-liquid assets. I was in NO WAY insinuating, in the slightest, that a campus building is a part of the endowment. I meant that such an investment cannot easily be “undone”. That is all I meant.</p>
<p>Penn isn’t as endowment-dependent as its peers. While it has been affected by the economic crisis, it hasn’t been nearly as hard-hit as Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth (a school half Penn’s size with a budget hold twice the size to fill)</p>
<p>Penn is expanding eastward in order to connect to Center City (the metropolitan hub of Philadelphia).</p>
<p>It is doing this at the recommendation of the conclusion of a 2 year study by a consulting firm, done in the late '90s, that indicated 1) many view Penn as isolated from the main city of Philadelphia and ensconced in “super-dangerous” West Philly, and 2) creating a manicured gateway from the more affluent city to West Philadelphia would probably speed up gentrification in and around the university, and ultimately make it a better place to live and study.
This was coupled with the necessity for expansion: Penn needs to build a new dorm and science research buildings in order to maintain its progress towards “eminence”, as Amy Guttman likes to put it.
In other words: in 20 years, Penn wants to be Stanford. The eastward expansion is a huge part of realizing that goal.</p>
<p>Quick addendum:
The fact that our financial aid emerged from the recession unscathed is going to allow us to snatch essentially all of the poor cross-admits from our peer schools. Dartmouth is returning to loans, while we’re offering free tuition to all families making $90k or less…</p>