Harvard--Had No Idea Things Were This Bad

Parent Cafe
621

<p>I hope some of them are taking some big pay cuts. The guy accused of improprieties at Wesleyan was pocketing $500k a year. Swarthmore and Pomona seem to manage their much larger endowments paying in-house guys under $200k.</p>

<p>Williams is cutting financial aid left and right, but has yet to close its Boston investment office and cut staff. Now that they are managing $500 million less money, they could probably make do with an on-campus office, the way they managed for 200 years until five years ago when Morty Schapiro signed off on a Boston office (I guess to give the operation more of a hedge fund feel).</p>

<p>If I’m a college president right now, I want my chief investment manager so close they can’t breath without seeing me and 100 students going to class.</p>

622

<p>“If I’m a college president right now, I want my chief investment manager so close they can’t breath without seeing me and 100 students going to class.”</p>

<p>:)</p>

<p>This was probably mentioned before, but I’m not getting the reason why internationals, on average, are getting a bigger discount.</p>

623

<p>There are two theories, depending upon how cynical you are: 1) that need-blind policies attract a self-selected group of poorer applicants, or 2) that need-blind policies encourage asset hiding to a disproportionate degree among intels. Either way, the less any family pays up front, the higher discount.</p>

624

<p>Oops… sorry,…………….I thought was the Amy Bishop thread</p>

625

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<p>You would expect, on average, for internationals to get larger financial aid discounts than US students. Their costs (including transportation and so forth) are typically higher.</p>

<p>What triggered this was Williams cutting financial aid packages by an average of $2000 per aided student (by revoking no-loan) while they were essentially getting next to no revenue from internationals (just $5000 per sudent, including the nine full-pay internatiionals they managed to enroll). I found it inconceivable that they would stay need-blind for internationals (at a cost of $6.5 million a year) while cutting aid for domestic students by $2 million. Sure enough, they announced yesterday the end of international need-blind.</p>

<p>I haven’t run the numbers for the Ivies, but international aid is a major budget item. You do have to question the fairness of internationals paying Williams $5,000 each when US students are paying $34,000 each (and when the US taxpayers are giving tax-exempt status to the school).</p>

<p>I think you’ll see a lot of schools take the Amherst approach and cap the number of internationals. The money is just not there to keep spending like drunken sailors on every good-sounding initiative without regard to cost. It’s all zero sum now.</p>

626

<p>“I haven’t run the numbers for the Ivies, but international aid is a major budget item. You do have to question the fairness of internationals paying Williams $5,000 each when US students are paying $34,000 each (and when the US taxpayers are giving tax-exempt status to the school).”</p>

<p>That’s what I was questioning. Made no sense to me.</p>

627

<p>Does to me. The internationals are there for the benefit of the nobles, to widen their exposure (same with the poor folk).</p>

628

<p>Do you think those internationals that are paying $5,000 are really rich?</p>

629

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<p>This bears repeating and bolded. Hopeful that every school out there is paying attention. Maybe have them eat in the dining halls as well. I think Williams holding onto that office and staff is absurd, to say nothing of an annual income that is, given the past two years, obscene and undeserved.</p>

630

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<p>$5000 is the average for the entire international cohort at Williams. They only managed to enrolll 7% full pay internationals, versus 43% full-pay at Swarthmore.</p>

<p>I have a hard time believing that the cohorts are very different. They come from the same schools. They have the same grades. Same SAT scores. Either Williams is going out of it’s way to avoid accepting affluent internationals, or something is going on with self-selection in the applicant and yield pool. </p>

<p>I have to believe that the world-class professionals in the Williams admissions office can find more than nine highly qualified full-pay students in the entire world outside the United States.</p>

<p>For instance, both Williams and Swarthmore accept and enroll numerous students from Daewon in Korea, widely regarded as the top feeder school in the world:</p>

<p>[Korean</a> School Preps Students For Ivy League : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106121695]Korean”>Korean School Preps Students For Ivy League : NPR)</p>

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631

<p>“I have to believe that the world-class professionals in the Williams admissions office can find more than nine highly qualified full-pay students in the entire world outside the United States.”</p>

<p>:)</p>

632

<p>A little Princetonian humor at Harvard’s plight:</p>

<p>[Princeton</a> Tiger Magazine Blog Archive Princeton Volunteers Dispense Hot Breakfasts to Deprived Harvard Students](<a href=“http://www.tigermag.com/2010/02/princeton-volunteers-dispense-hot-breakfasts-to-deprived-harvard-students/]Princeton”>Princeton Volunteers Dispense Hot Breakfasts to Deprived Harvard Students – Tiger Magazine)</p>

<p>Sorry, if this link has been posted, I haven’t followed the thread. D passed it on as one of her friends is in it.</p>

633

<p>[peHUB</a> University of Florida CIO Steps Down](<a href=“http://www.pehub.com/63917/university-of-florida-cio-steps-down/]peHUB”>http://www.pehub.com/63917/university-of-florida-cio-steps-down/)</p>

<p>Another one bites the dust.</p>

<p>[Olympic</a> Alpine site may be for sale during games - Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Olympic-Alpine-site-may-be-apf-3685232250.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=]Olympic”>http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Olympic-Alpine-site-may-be-apf-3685232250.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=)</p>

<p>Another example of why Harvard would like to exit the real estate market–I think the exit line is pretty long at this point though</p>

634

<p>Wild-the official ranking of scary endowments just moved Princeton past Harvard into second place so I fear princeton may be facing a hot meal/hot room cut back of their own:</p>

<ol>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Columbia/MIT</li>
</ol>

635

<p>How are you basing these rankings? Post 634.</p>

636

<p>Dstark-categories included:

  • percentage of assets in tier 3
  • Capital call committments as a percent of endowment value
  • dependence on endowment
  • debt issuance
  • endowment payout percentage
  • aggressiveness in tackling problem</p>
637

<p>"$5000 is the average for the entire international cohort at Williams. They only managed to enrolll 7% full pay internationals, versus 43% full-pay at Swarthmore.</p>

<p>I have a hard time believing that the cohorts are very different. They come from the same schools. They have the same grades. Same SAT scores. Either Williams is going out of it’s way to avoid accepting affluent internationals, or something is going on with self-selection in the applicant and yield pool."</p>

<p>I think it is just the opposite. Swarthmore is the outlier - specifically seeking out wealthy internationals to subsidize the arboretum.</p>

638

<p>ok…I like those categories. Thanks.</p>

639

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<p>Well, whatever they are doing, I sure hope they keep doing it because the arboretum is really pretty and Swarthmore’s international students produce some real stars on campus. Two of the school’s seven Rhodes scholars since 2000 have been international students:</p>

<p>**Tafadzwa Muguwe '05 **was an international student at Swarthmore from Zimbabwe. He deferred his admission to Harvard Medical School after winning the Rhodes so he could study immunology at Oxford. He’s now at Harvard studying to be an HIV researcher, with a specific focus on the HIV epidemic in his native Africa.</p>

<p>[Swarthmore</a> College | Letter From Oxford](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/x4290.xml]Swarthmore”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/x4290.xml)</p>

<p>**Andrew Sniderman '07 **was a Canadian, majoring in Poli Sci and studying private military forces with James Kurth. While an undergrad, Sniderman co-founded the Genocide Intervention Network with two other Swarthmore students. It had raised $1.5 million to arm African peacekeeping forces in the Sudan by the time he graduated. He then had a fellowship in the Canadian Parliament before winning the Rhodes from Canada.</p>

<p>[Andrew</a> Sniderman '07, Rhodes Scholar, Reveals All :: The Daily Gazette](<a href=“daily.swarthmore.edu domain has changed”>daily.swarthmore.edu domain has changed)</p>

<p>One of Sniderman’s Genocide Intervention Network co-founders at Swarthmore was an international student, Stephanie Nyombayire '08. She arrived in Philadelphia at age 16, barely speaking English, after fleeing with her family from the genocide in Rwanda where 100 members of her family had been killed. In the fall of 2004 she enrolled at Swarthmore in my daughter’s class. By the time she graduated in 2008, she had founded the genocide non-profit, travelled to Africa as a correspondent for an MTV documentary, given a speech from the steps of the US Capitol, been featured in Glamour magazine as one of their top 10 college women of the year, introduced Bill Clinton as the keynote speaker at a genocide convention, served as a panelist on a forum at the Clinton Global Intitiative, and received an award from the First Lady of Rwanda. </p>

<p>[Stephanie</a> Nyombayire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Nyombayire]Stephanie”>Stephanie Nyombayire - Wikipedia)
[Glamour</a> Hero: She Lost 100 Family Members to Genocide: Magazine: glamour.com](<a href=“http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2007/03/glamour-hero-stephanie-nyombayire]Glamour”>Glamour Hero: She Lost 100 Family Members to Genocide | Glamour)
[url=<a href=“http://media.mtvu.com/on_mtvu/activism/stand/search.jhtml]mtvU.com[/url”>http://media.mtvu.com/on_mtvu/activism/stand/search.jhtml]mtvU.com[/url</a>]</p>

<p>I have no idea whether or not any of these were “wealthy internationals”, but I certainly hope they enjoyed the arboretum from time to time. Maybe Williams could send an envoy down to the admissions office at Swarthmore and get some pointers on recruiting the “wealthy internationals” instead of the “poor internationals” from Daewon and Raffles!</p>

640

<p>wait, so now Swarthmore is lumping “international” Rhodes’ (Rhodes scholarships awarded to nationals by their home countries) as part of their Rhodes scholar totals?</p>