<p>They likely have been cut in half by the financial meltdown. Some of them were very heavy in mortgage backed securities, the raging fire on wall street.</p>
<p>Any suggestions on how one could check them. Not overly investment saavy?</p>
<p>Ask them DIRECTLY. They dont post that stuff online as to what they own and its value. Generally all we get is an aggregate approximate value. </p>
<p>But they are very cagey about how they tell you what is in the bag. My guess would be that a lot of them have been HAMMERED by the wallstreet meltdown, particularly if they bought mortgage backed securities, which we know now are WORTHLESS PIECES OF CRUD.</p>
<p>Good to see them get what they deserve.</p>
<p>As a note for people with grants from your school, you should watch them too. I’ve been hearing worries of where all the money is going to pay for grad students, as a lot of the stipends here are paid out on the earnings of various parts of the endowment over a five year averaged period. So, if the downturn continues, grad school might not be that likely of an option for a lot of students as funds given by the school dry up a bit.</p>
<p>For those of us in the biomedical sciences, the concern is not that funding will dry up. It is that the NIH budget won’t increase at the pace of inflation. Since the NIH is responsible for most of the funding in these areas, it is the government entity to watch, not the school’s endowment. At the risk of spawning a political debate, I would just like to mention that Obama is planning to double the NIH budget over the next decade as was done in 1998-2003.
[GenomeWeb</a> News: McCain, Obama Advisors Claim Candidates’ Support for Greater Science Funding](<a href=“http://www.genomeweb.com/issues/news/149520-1.html]GenomeWeb”>http://www.genomeweb.com/issues/news/149520-1.html)</p>
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<p>I’m pretty surprised to see this expressed by a person on an admissions-related message board. If you are in college, or planning to enroll in a college, “Them” is now “you” because the endowment proceeds support your education.</p>
<p>Anyway, I wouldn’t advise anyone get too panicked. How much this will affect financial aid and programs in the short term may be hard to determine. Schools generally determine their spending rate based on an average market value of the endowment, spread over multiple quarters (adding up to years). So endowment spending will not plunge as quickly as endowment value did. Of course, if there is a long-term depression in value, that will have a bigger effect on spending, possibly cutting into scholarship funds and other program-related spending</p>