Monday, December 29, 2008

KU scores 0

Good job KU in losing all that money on the stock market instead of distributing those endowment funds to the students as intended by the donors.

"KU Endowment, the official fundraising foundation for the University of Kansas, is cutting its distributions for scholarships, lectures and academic programs by 10 percent next school year. The foundation saw its investment portfolio decline by 39 percent - from $1.22 billion on June 30 to $747 million on Nov. 30."

KU is basically using generous endowment funds to play the market instead of giving those funds to the students. This is outrageous. Losing 473 million dollars. Instead of cutting scholarships, lectures and academic programs, fire people in charge of KU Endowment Foundation.

In addition, I suggest KU stop playing the stock market with the remaining 747 million and use those funds as intended by the donors and reduce tuition and give the the rest to KU students in the form of scholarships not based on race/gender.

2 comments:

  1. Correction: College endowments story

    The Associated Press
    TOPEKA, Kan. — In a Dec. 28 story about college endowments, The Associated Press reported erroneously that the KU Endowment, the fundraising foundation for the University of Kansas, has seen its investment portfolio decline by 39 percent — from $1.22 billion on June 30 to $747 million on Nov. 30. The portfolio has declined by 30 percent — from $1.08 billion to $747 million.

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  2. At http://www.kuendowment.org/annualreport/2008/financialposition.aspx reports the value of endowment investments to be 1,302,787,000 on June 30 as verified by independent audit.

    So the amount of 1.22 billion is wrong. Nor have I seen any error reported by the AP.

    So, the focus is someone is responsible for losing a lot of money on the stock market with this foundation's donated funds. And should be replaced.

    Furthermore, these funds if distributed would be enough money to pay the tuition for all Kansas students (30,000) for quite a few years. Foundations give out token amounts and hoard these endowment funds.

    These public universities including KU or any state university should be required to disclose to donors that a large portion of their donation will be used to play the stock market; instead of distributed to the students as intended by the donors.

    Especially when they solicit funds to prospective donors. Problem is these university foundations do not want to give disclosure of how much they have in endowment funds; or how they mismanage them.

    mod.

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