<p>bumpbumpbump</p>
<p>Because Wesleyan is a caricature of what is wrong with higher education today (political correctness run amok), and consequently an embarrassment to much of its alumni base.</p>
<p>Firstly, it's only relatively low. (Many schools would be happy with $600 million.) But compared with other top LACs, like Amherst and Williams, it's low. From what I understand, these are the reasons:
*The last generation (mid '80s-mid '90s) proved to be somewhat apathetic donors. (I.e. very counter-culture; not big contributors.) This is partly why Wesleyan's administration is attempting 'change Wesleyan's culture.'
* Unlike Amherst and Williams, Wesleyan added graduate programs. (Princeton and Dartmouth did this with much success.) This drained financial resources... Colgate's expansion met with similar results.</p>
<p>As recently as the early 1980s, Wesleyan had a higher endowment than Amherst and Williams.</p>
<p>I found the answer in an archived Wesleyan Argus (school newspaper) from November 2006: </p>
<p>"One major source of the University's relative financial weakness stretches back to a large windfall it reaped from Xerox stock in the late 1960s. The endowment surging, the University started to spend heavily and failed to develop innovative investment strategies."</p>
<p>"After experiencing the extreme market volatility of the 1970s, Wesleyan reacted by becoming overly conservative in its investment strategy, over-investing in bonds relative to the Board of Trustees' own guidelines. As a result, in hindsight, we didn't take full advantage of the overall run-up in stocks from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s."</p>
<p>Wesleyan did have an endowment equal to that of Amherst and Williams in the early 1980's, but see above for why there is disparity now.</p>
<p>Wesleyan has less in its endowment than some comparable schools like Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore. It has more than other comparable schools like Carleton, Colgate, Haverford, Davidson. Here's the list: <a href="http://www.nacubo.org/documents/research/2006NES_Listing.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.nacubo.org/documents/research/2006NES_Listing.pdf</a></p>
<p>Also, I think it's pretty well agreed at Wes that it wasn't the so-called counterculture alumni that was to blame for the low growth of the endowment in the 1980s and early 1990s, but rather a lackadaisical fundraising office and weak endowment management. Wesleyan's investment managers didn't take advantage of the big stock market runup. When Doug Bennet took over a decade ago he was able to quickly turn things around. The alumni hadn't changed; the administration did.</p>
<p>Wesleyan has 400 graduate students, up from maybe 200 in the early 80's. It's hard to see how this could have had any meaningful impact on the endowment. </p>
<p>If true, however, it is telling that the school had a much higher relative endowment in the early 80's, for it is during the 80's that Wesleyan began its evolution from being a progressive, but mainstream liberal arts college, to the radicalized institution of today. </p>
<p>It may well be the case that the counter-culture grads of the 80's and 90's don't contribute, but the real problem for the Wesleyan endowment is that the grads from the 60's and 70's, who would be in a position to boost the endowment, have been alienated as Wesleyan has become a counter-culture institution.</p>
<p>cwhurst: The trouble with your analysis is that it's contradicted by the numbers. USNews reports that 51 percent of Wesleyan's alumni donate to the institution, a few points below Swarthmore and Wellesley but way better than almost all other liberal arts colleges. And by the way, higher than every Ivy but Princeton. Doesn't sound like the alums are alienated to me.</p>
<p>One of those 1970s grads just made a nice donation for the new science building: <a href="http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc-wescash0321.artmar21,0,1260360.story?coll=hc-headlines-education%5B/url%5D">http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc-wescash0321.artmar21,0,1260360.story?coll=hc-headlines-education</a></p>
<p>Read "Patient Investor" under 2006 Issue #2.</p>
<p>Basically supports what froshdad says. </p>
<p>Oh, and Swarthmore has lots of those damn commie hippies; but endowment poor it isn't.</p>
<p>cwhurst: Interesting analysis, but completely off. While I'm sure it would be nice to pin the endowment problems on the crazy radical nature of Wesleyan, the reality is that there were a couple of really terrible investments.</p>
<p>There was an interesting two-part article series in the Argus earlier this year that gave some of the history about Wesleyan's endowment - they can be found here ( <a href="http://wesleyanargus.com/article.php?article_id=4256%5B/url%5D">http://wesleyanargus.com/article.php?article_id=4256</a> ) and here ( <a href="http://wesleyanargus.com/article.php?article_id=4289%5B/url%5D">http://wesleyanargus.com/article.php?article_id=4289</a> ).</p>
<p>I found the various articles posted above in part quite troubling as the parent of a prospective student. The nov. 14th Argus article if it arcurately quoted its sources points to an economic inability to add to the faculty,inability to keep faculty salaries from lagging against peer institutions,poor faculty resource scores as compared to peer institutions and not enough money to maintain its blueprint for the future plan. Although it can be argued that there may be acceptable future growth in the endowment portfolio it is the strength of donations that is not quantifiable. So how will these problems impact a student who is about to embark on four years at a school whose financial infrastructure is not up to par and by its own analysis is worrisome in the near term? How will that impact near term rises in the cost of going to Wes per year? Will there be a faculty irritated at their employers who either leave for greener pastures or decrease productivity? We love the school but this is a consideration.</p>
<p>Dana's Dad</p>
<p>Don't know if this list of endowment per student (based on data compiled by Williams College Development Office) will make you feel better or worse.</p>
<p>Certainly shows Wes towards the bottom of the list. On the other hand, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, and Georgetown are lower. Cornell is virtually identical; Penn, Brown, and Columbia are higher, but not by huge orders of magnitude.</p>
<p>To be sure, Wes is way behind the really rich LACs -- Grinnell, P,S,A,W, Wellesley, which is what the Argus article was alluding to. </p>
<p>But the difference between Wes and those LACs is not as great as, say, the difference between Penn and the really really rich universities: S, P, Y, H. </p>
<p>That said, Wesleyan needs to pay its faculty more; I think the new President understands that; we'll see if he makes it a priority.</p>
<p>Dana's Dad - there are market forces at work here; Wesleyan has never lost a senior member of the faculty to another LAC due to money. In fact, the last time a tenured professor left Wes for another LAC was in 1974, when Richard Wilbur, the librettist and poet, left for Smith after teaching at Wes for some twenty years (in his case, money was not the issue -- he had a house in Northampton.) It more frequently loses faculty to larger research universities, but, even there the issues are more frequently about lighter teaching duties, not money.</p>
<p>Yes, faculty size is an issue -- as it frequently is with LACs. When Wesleyan lowered it's student faculty ratio to 9:1 in the mid nineties, Amherst and Williams responded by lowering their's to 8:1 and later to 7:1; it's the kind of pedagogical arms race that has been going on between them for generations -- with no discernible impact on what students actually learn in the classroom.</p>
<p>More broadly speaking, Wesleyan, spends pretty much the same amounts per capita on faculty salaries and library resources -- the core of the academic enterprise -- as Swarthmore, a pretty good LAC.</p>
<p>Are there things to watch out for? Of course. But, nothing that should deter a parent from freely choosing Wesleyan among many top quality colleges and universities. The school is not going broke (you wouldn't be reading interviews with the chief portfolio manager if it were); it's bond ratings are excellent.</p>
<p>Now, let's get back to talking about education. :)</p>
<p>Also, danalynne: there remains much optimism among students and faculty about what the new President (Michael Roth) who will be coming in next year will do with the endowment (both in its upkeep and how it is being spent, especially with regard to faculty salaries).</p>
<p>Thank you all for your input. John Wesley in my opinion education the last time I looked was a factor of the relationship between a school made up of faculty, support staff, administration,facilities,infrastructure and students. They don't operate in a vacuum without money and lots of it.</p>
<p>I am glad to hear that over the years the senior faculty has not left this great school. However there always needs to be a great junior faculty that is well paid in comparison to its peer institutuions as well as an infusion of young faculty.</p>
<p>Please remember that it takes many years to develop and effectuate a major fund raising initiative. The concern is the short-term years between the major fund raisers. </p>
<p>I was impressed with the progress and the initiatives of the man in charge of Wesleyan's investments and the trustees' oversight.Endowment = education progress John W. I have no concern that the "school is going broke". </p>
<p>Dana's Dad</p>
<p>These are some very interesting points. Perhaps I overestimate alumni disaffection with regard to giving, or perhaps Wesleyan's giving statistics obfuscate it. I don't know. But I do find the "Wesleyan Fund:Class Analysis" on the school website very interesting. It shows an overall giving percentage of 53% for 2006, but for the classes prior to 1981, the number of alumni shown appears to be much smaller than the actual number of graduates. And the difference, at least for the 60's and 70's, seems far too great to be explained by deaths. For example, the number of alumni shown for my class in the late 70's is less than 70% of the number of graduates (and, clearly, 200 of my classmates have not met an untimely demise). Perhaps johnwesley can explain this discrepancy. It looks to me, though, that perhaps Wesleyan's giving statistics ignore entirely those alumni who are so disaffected that the school no longer knows how to contact them to solicit them for donations.</p>
<p>You have to remember that Wesleyan nearly doubled in size between about 1973 and 1981; the classes of the sixties and seventies were all-male until the Class of 1974 and women did not reach parity in terms of the actual composition of each class until about 1981. That would explain the discrepancy.</p>
<p>That being said, Wesleyan is not immune from massaging the number of alum who give; it was the subject of a recent alumni listserv thread, in fact. For example, many colleges, Wes included, count the senior class gift as an alumni contribution (even though the class hasn't graduated yet.) Wesleyan also routinely distributes particularly large gifts (or, at least the pledges) over a number of years rather than limiting it to the year it was initially made. I'm sure there are other tricks of the trade.</p>