Opinion: Colleges Must Open Up About Endowments

Well-heeled universities should do more to tailor their investments to match their public mission and be more transparent about their portfolios, a Chronicle of Higher Education commentator writes.

Joshua Humphreys, a fellow at Boston think tank the Tellus Institute, says students and staff nationwide are calling on colleges to incorporate social and environmental responsibility into their endowment management and offer donors options to ensure their gifts are invested in ways that more align with a school’s mission.

“[A]n endowment need not suffer an inevitable trade-off in performance by incorporating responsible-investing criteria,” Mr. Humphreys writes. He contrast’s Notre Dame’s endowment—which follows such guidelines and has recovered fully from the 2008 market crash—with Harvard’s which focuses solely on “enhancing the university’s financial resources” but has yet to make up its $11-billion in endowment losses.

Mr. Humphreys writes that his invitation to speak at a forum on such issues hosted last month by Harvard’s Undergraduate Council was rescinded at the last minute because the Harvard Management Company—the university subsidiary that runs its $32-million endowment—refused to send a representative if he participated.