interesting read, @circuitrider.
I’d also read somewhere that there was a lot of capital spend and digging into capital, coupled with missing out on some market growth.
Fair-minded people can disagree about this, but, it helps to put it into perspective: Wesleyan was already a very wealthy LAC by the time of the sale of AEP to Xerox in 1965. It’s endowment dwarfed it’s Little Three rivals by maybe 25% in the case of Amherst and as much as 50% in the case of the Williams. What’s fascinating is the difference between what was considered “wealthy” in those days. A school of roughly 1,000 students like Williams was considered doing exceptionally well with an endowment that was worth - in constant 2016 dollars - anywhere in the vicinity of $300,000,000. Now, throw in the publishing company sale: The book value of the stock given by Xerox in exchange for AEP was worth that much alone. Within a year, the market value would double. In effect, the proceeds of the sale of AEP would triple the value of Wesleyan’s endowment over its nearest rival almost overnight. “Capital” or windfall? You be the judge. The college that grew from that deal is the college that drew the attention of Lin-Manuel Miranda some forty years later.
Fair-minded people can disagree about this, but, it helps to put it into perspective: Wesleyan was already a very wealthy LAC by the time of the sale of AEP to Xerox in 1965. It’s endowment dwarfed it’s Little Three rivals by maybe 25% in the case of Amherst and as much as 50% in the case of Williams. What’s fascinating is the difference between what was considered “wealthy” in those days. A school of roughly 1,200 students like Amherst was considered doing exceptionally well with an endowment that was worth - in constant 2016 dollars - anywhere in the vicinity of $300,000,000. Now, throw in the publishing company sale: The book value of the stock given by Xerox in exchange for AEP was worth that much alone. Within a year, the market value would double. In effect, the proceeds of the sale of AEP would triple the value of Wesleyan’s endowment over its nearest rival almost overnight. “Capital” or windfall? You be the judge. The college that grew from that deal is the college that would draw the attention of Lin-Manuel Miranda some forty years later.