April 22, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
Should Yale University name a college after its chief investment officer?
Usually such naming rights are reserved for donors of large sums. And a group of alumni believe that Yale’s investment manager, has indirectly donated millions of dollars —- by earning a far smaller salary at Yale than he could command on Wall Street.
According to an article in The Yale Daily News, a group of anonymous alumni are pushing Yale to name a college after David Swensen, who as the institution’s investment manager for 23 years has helped increase its endowment from $1.3-billion to $22.5-billion.
In a full-page advertisement in the newspaper, the alumni suggest that Mr.
Swensen has sacrificed a $100-million Wall Street salary to work for Yale.
But Robert Frank, author of The Wall Street Journal’s The Wealth
Report,
balks at giving the financial guru naming rights.
“Maybe Mr. Swensen could make $100-million a year, maybe not. But measuring
someone’s contribution based on their theoretical salary in another job is
misleading. It’s like saying Hank Paulson [former head of Goldman Sachs who
now leads the U.S. Treasury Department] should have a federal building named
after him because he’s giving up millions (or billions) he could be making
in the private sector,” writes Mr. Frank.
Do you think Yale should name a college after Mr. Swensen? If not, how
should a nonprofit group honor a successful financial manager?
