<p>How much money do they spend yearly, strictly on academics (not counting administration, not counting auxilliary enterprises, not counting management and upkeep of all those apartment buildings, etc., etc.?)</p>
<p>What year? The budget is changing in light of the endowment increases and decreases.</p>
<p>I dont really understand the question. At a residential undergrad college, essentially all operating budget spending contributes to the undergrad “academic” or “educational” experience. For example, the President and the Deans and the Provost offices are directly linked to undergrad education at Swarthmore. The Dean of the College (and math professor) raided the closed dining hall and cooked Sunday brunch in a dorm kitchen for several hundred students stranded by a snowstorm at the start of Christmas vacation. Should I count his salary?</p>
<p>How about the cost of maintaining the beautiful old neighborhood house purchased by the College that serves as the Black Student’s Center? I certainly think those expenses contribute to “academics” or “education” at Swarthmore.</p>
<p>I don’t don’t know how to separate the classroom from the residential at a school like that. That concept runs counter to the very nature of a small undergrad college.</p>
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<p>Blah, blah, blah. Save it for the helicopter parents. You talk about all the money Swarthmore spends on “education” when a ton of it goes towards the semi-retired, lame-ducks and, faculty spouses masquerading as deans, deans and more deans (and, I’ll bet every one of them counts towards its student:faculty ratio, too.)</p>
<p>Huh? There’s only one faculty spouse working as a Dean at Swarthmore. Myrt Westphal. She’s a legend. Dean of Housing for decades. She personally matched freshmen roommates for years with the housing questionairres piled up on her kitchen table at home. She got promoted a few years back to Dean of Student Life. Does a terrific job. Each dean is assigned to a class. She had the sophmores this year and implemented a new program to address some of the traditional “sophmore slump” issues. Started the year with a “sophmore Collection” in the amphitheater with the President of the College and other speakers. I’m impressed with the initiative, which grew out of a national dean’s conference focused on sophmore issues.</p>
<p>Swarthmore doesn’t count professors assigned to administrative posts in the student-faculty reported. They count the actual courses taught in determining full-time and part-time FTEs. For example, this year, they have 205 full-time faculty on the payroll, plus another 34 part time, plus 6 early-retiree, plus 70 instructional staff. For their student-faculty ratio caluculation, they use a number of 180.1 FTE. faculty.</p>
<p>Swarthmore usually has a large number of Deans. They have specifically tried to have a Dean to be the liason to each identity group on campus: African Americans, International, Latino/a, LBGT students, etc. The fact that these students have an advocate makes them feel more like stakeholders in the community and is a big reason that Swarthmore has been a leader in building a successful diverse community. It is a difficult challenge to evolve from hoity-toit lily-white elitec college 50 years ago to one that not only has minority students, but reflects the those students at all levels of the school (the so-called, “third-wave” of diversity). Diversity is expensive; there’s no question about it. It’s one of the costs that many colleges are grappling with. At the particular moment, Swarthmore is shorthanded in the Dean’s department. The retiring President took the Dean of the College with him to NYU Abu Dhabi and that Dean turned around a hired two long-time Swarthmore assistent deans – the “black” dean and the “jock” dean. They’ve just hired a new Dean of the College and have announced a search process to fill the “black students dean” slot. (There are two other African-American deans, but they are not specifically assigned to the Black Student Center). They are going to leave the “jock” dean slot unfilled as a cost-savings measure.</p>
<p>I view the money spent on the Dean’s office as integral to the educational product at Swarthmore. Those employees are exclusively focused on the undergraduate experience and, specifcially, on roping up struggling students and helping them make the climb. I think that is an critical role in a top undergrad educational program.</p>
<p>wait, Swarthmore had a “jock dean”? :o</p>
<p>^Probably a reason why they picked it for attrition. ;)</p>
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<p>Yes. Swarthmore graduate. Masters from UPenn. Was the coach of the women’s field hockey team for a number of years before moving to the Deans Office as Assistant Dean for Student Life. She was in charge of “wellness” programs, alcohol education, etc. as well as being the liason to the sports teams from the Deans Office.</p>
<p>They aren’t replacing her because Swarthmore had nine deans (or one for every 155 students on campus) and financial times are tough so they are gong to try to squeak by with just one dean for every 175 students for a few years.</p>
<p>sm74…just for you…</p>
<p>[‘Club</a>’ Suit Dogs Buyout Firms - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954904575110132751542498.html?mod=googlenews_wsj]'Club”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954904575110132751542498.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)</p>
<p>"The lawsuit followed a Justice Department investigation into possible anticompetitive behavior related to the clubs launched in 2006. That investigation continues, according to people familiar with the probe.</p>
<p>The lawsuit accuses the firms of allocating deals among themselves; submitting sham bids; agreeing not to bid on certain deals; and limiting competition by bringing losing bidders into the winning buyers’ group. It cites an academic study by three business-school professors from Loyola Marymount University, the University of Southern California and Ohio State University concluding that club-deal LBOs paid premiums to shareholders that were roughly 40% lower than LBOs struck by one private-equity firm.</p>
<p>It also takes aim at the multiple roles investment banks play in certain deals, advising sellers while offering financing to prospective buyers or sometimes co-investing on the deal. The complaint highlights the buyout of food-service company Aramark Corp., on which Goldman Sachs participated as a private-equity fund, a financing bank and an adviser.</p>
<p>In court papers, lawyers for the private-equity firms have characterized the lawsuit as putting forth a “far-fetched theory by doing nothing more than describing routine M&A activity, and labeling it anticompetitive.” Buyout executives say they have always fiercely competed against each other for deals. During the buyout boom, the size of the transactionssome topping $30 billionrequired that they pool their capital. They also noted that seller boards always retained the final decision to sell the company or not."</p>
<p>Stark, I do think by banding together they might have been trying to depress competition. However, the takeovers that were happening during the 2005-08 bubble were huge and I can’t really blame them for trying to spread their risk out. And the comment the PE guy says about the companies that were bought out should be thanking them is really true-if you look at the biggest deals at the peak of the bubble just about all of them have been disasters. The biggest were:
Clear Channel
Hilton
GMAC
Chrysler
HCA
TXU
Equity Office
Harrahs
Freescale
Albertsons</p>
<p>Not a pretty picture there.</p>
<p>The main reason the PE’s were able to do these 20-50Bilion buyouts was because of the insane amount of committments they were getting from pensions and endowments. What is interesting to me is that the large capital committments that Harvard, Princeton, and Yale still have are from this time period and time is running out on PE companies to invest that money. So what is happening now is the PE companies after a couple of years of not investing are rushing to invest so colleges will be getting much bigger calls for money this year. Meanwhile the PE companies are still having trouble exiting or cashing in on existing investments-looking at the collection of companies above its no wonder. Net-net there is still alot of pressure on cash flow, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more borrowing by colleges.</p>
<p>Below is recent article detailing whats going on now:</p>
<p>[Buyout</a> Firms Can?t Spend $503 Billion as Fund Deadlines Loom - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>My favorite line is “Some funds say their investors(endowments) are glad they held onto their committments”. In other words things would have really been bad at the colleges if PE firms had been making capital calls last year.</p>
<p>[Stanford</a> University Considers $1.2 Billion of Bond, Note Sales - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>That was quick</p>
<p>sm74, yes…you’re right.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link.</p>
<p>And the Stanford link too.</p>
<p>And why do private colleges get to issue tax exempt bonds?</p>
<p>^^ because they are tax exempt non profits?[ just a guess]</p>
<p>Yes…you’re probably right.</p>
<p>I believe they can get tax free financing for capital projects like dorms or education buildings. However if its for covering operating costs I believe it is taxable financing, and many Universities have been issuing higher cost taxable bonds of late. In the case of Stanford I would assume the commercial paper portion would be taxable.</p>
<p>[Watchdog:</a> GMAC bailout could cost taxpayers $6.3B - Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Watchdog-GMAC-bailout-could-apf-3397118710.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=]Watchdog:”>http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Watchdog-GMAC-bailout-could-apf-3397118710.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=)</p>
<p>You know Stark the financial types at CNBC can’t understand why PE companies are held in such disrepute - maybe they should check out this article where me and you are bailing out a company that was taken out with massive leverage and owned by Cerberus-one of the largest PE firms around that is owned by some of the wealthiest people in America.</p>
<p>sm74, are you trying to raise my blood pressure? :)</p>
<p>I look at the people involved in Cereberus…Jack Snow…Dan Quayle…and they are still wealthy. The taxpayers…screwed…</p>
<p>Stark, this ought to get your blood pressure up-Universities are getting crushed by their bad pe bets but the guys running the funds seem to be doing just fine.</p>
<p>[PE</a> Does Better On Forbes List, Despite What Forbes Says - Private Equity Beat - WSJ](<a href=“http://blogs.wsj.com/privateequity/2010/03/11/pe-does-better-on-forbes-list-despite-what-forbes-says/]PE”>http://blogs.wsj.com/privateequity/2010/03/11/pe-does-better-on-forbes-list-despite-what-forbes-says/)</p>
<p>Pretty amazing…these guys are worth more than most endowments.</p>
<p>[Payback</a> Time - Avalanche of Maturing Junk Bonds Looms for Markets - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/business/16debt.html?dbk]Payback”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/business/16debt.html?dbk)</p>
<p>Very scary numbers on debt repayments over the next few years much of which was taken out during the 2005-08 PE boom. What is happening now is PE companies are trying to re-finance putting debt payments off to later years. They are doing this partially thru injecting new capital as a part of the deal. New capital comes from capital call committments which pensions/endowments committed to back in the boom era. So a big portion of new capital calls are not going to new investments, they are going to shore up old ones.</p>