Cheat Sheet

Harvard going bankrupt.
Laughed out loud.

I would not be sad in the least... and, like keep, if that happened I actually would LOL.

BAIL OUT....! nevermind all the graduates stole enough money from the wallst bailouts they come to the rescue..

Now, now, progressives spent that money hand over foot on social redeeming programs and it is totally wrong that they should go broke over such well intended programs! The system is obviously screwed up, the US is bad and of course, as always, Bush is to blame! LOL We all must be forgetting the program here!! What's up with that? LMAO

If Harvard is going bankrupt, it's karma for legacy admissions of idiot children of wealthy political families, the prime example being George W. Bush at the B-school.

Is it true??? A morsel of sweet justice, finally? That school, (and a few other vaulted 'superior' schools in the same team), whose financial wreckage graduates unleashed on the world, getting its well deserved comeuppance? Tell me more!

Harvard going bankrupt? Not in 1 million years! Ain't gonna happen, the institution is too intertwined within the "system". In fact if you were to draw a diagram of the old "military-industrial complex" Harvard, and its little cousin Yale would sit squarely atop the ganglion complex.

This essay should be filed alongside the other scare issues like "killer bees", "swine flu epidemic", "N.Korea's Hawaiian missle launch", "9/11".

The only thing more ridiculous would be an American government that was not controlled by the Banking and Oil Industries!

Oh, this is so sweet to hear. After decades of hearing how a Harvard business degree was THE one to have because of the prestige behind it, this is soooooo sweet to me. How can a B-School that flunked its own financial and operational management 'tests' be taken seriously any longer?

If it fails, good riddance. Maybe the Methodists can take it back?

Such petite bourgeoisie matters would never be associated with Yale.

I went to Yale Yep! stood next to the sign at the bus station. also went to Boston. You cant beat them, you can't join them you can't embarrass them. The only thing to do is to show them how it's done so they envy you. Supply your own food, power and education. When enough of us go off the grid they will notice. Then they will try to herd us back onto the reservation by gun point.

College is for football and drinking
and now that pesky Harvard is out of the way
The U. of Miami will finally take its rightful place as the #1 school in the country

Another disaster with Summers and Rubin's involved. Rubin made money from Citibank and they wanted bailout from govt. May be Summers can use his power to get Obama to bailout Harvard. Also, I wonder why would you like to get MBA from Harvard.

I think Harvard will cut back and make sacrifices, but I don't think Harvard will go bankrupt. With all those MBA graduates, surely some will help them manage their budget. Seriously though, fundraising may have declined because of a graduate that people don't agree with or support.

By what conceivable definition of "bankrupt" is Harvard (or Yale, or Princeton, or Stanford...) bankrupt? Although current and planned expenditures exceed returns on investments and other sources of current income, these institutions continue to hold enormous endownments, and are in no danger of inability to pay their lighting bills (should they have to dip significantly into capital, which they prefer not to do).

Have the endowments of Harvard, or other leading universities, fallen by more than relevant market indexes over the past year or two?

To be sure, recent losses are far greater than more conservatively managed portfolios would have been. But if one looks over the past decade, or perhaps two, would these universities have been in better shape overall had they followed more conservative investing practices?

I'm not aware of many non-profits that have not suffered significantly over the course of the past year's economic collapse. Is there reason to single out Harvard, or any similar institution, for doing especially worse than others during these extraordinary times? Other than its overall size, and the pleasure some people take in sticking it to institutions of its reputation and power, economic and other?

None of this is to say that Harvard, or other prominent institutions, should be immune from scrutiny or criticism, and there is no doubt that ambitious plans have had to be scaled back drastically and painfully for the immediate, and perhaps longer-term future. But I remember years of criticism that these institutions invested too conservatively to take advantage of a then-growing economy, and spent too little of their endowments on financial aid programs necessary to make the institutions accessible to students from financially needy and middle class families.

This story lacks all sense of history and context, which greatly diminishes the force and credibility of its criticisms among thoughtful readers (not much in evidence in the prior comments). I look forward to more thoughtful critical analyses--although probably not in this venue.
--The Wise Bard (and yes, I have degrees from Harvard, and from Yale, but have rarely hesitated to criticize some aspects of these institutions when called for).

So that is where Wall Street learned incompetence?

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/07/when-accountability-is-plague.html

This is where many of our "elite" know it alls in DC and on Wall Street come from so this is hardly surprising. The big question is why we keep paying a premium for their "expertise".

As far as I know, the B School has nothing to do with managing Harvard's endowment. It was managed by a young financial whiz who made far more than Harvard's President, then quit to open a hedge fund and went broke.

The problem doubtless has more to do with the state of the economy and the markets than whether or not Harvard is spending too much on scholarships, on faculty salaries or building a new campus, though the latter is probably less than necessary and more than stupid.

Sheesh, why all the vitriol? Harvard didn't make Bush the way he is...he would be a morally bankrupt moron no matter which school he went to. All of Harvard's less ethical members of the alumni would be. Harvard is one of the world's best schools and something Americans should be proud of because its our OURS. I don't think it has wracked up any horrid karmic debt. I'd be willing to bet Harvard has graduated more proactive, brilliant and constructive people in its history that crooked pension stealers.

Harvard is not and will not go bankruptcy. It has the biggest endowment of the world for an educational institute, last l heard is 35 billion dollars. The story even exist is because someone decide to use the headline to boost more contribution from alumni, that's all. pure and simple. Don't cry for me Havardina, indeed.

Won't happen. Let us not forget that each of these universities are very complex institutions and that within each are many separate budgetary units, each with its own piece of the endowment, and each under management, with numerous streams of income, and more or less dependent on endowment income for operations. So, some parts of Harvard, are having to cut, and it is no doubt the same at the other colleges. But, some, are doing just fine, even though their endowments also took a hit, but because there are other sources of income, they are sailing along without much perturbation. The giving is down, and may take a goodly time to recover, what with bonuses not much in evidence these days and market losses only beginning to recover. So, this article takes a simple summary of various schools' endowment losses, and parlays this basic information into tabloid-style "news." I dare say that endowment management is going to take a different tack for sometime to come. I agree with the gentleman above who says we should prize these institutions as wonderfully and uniquely OURS. If they were so dastardly as some would think, why is every smart kid in the world (literally) trying to get in to one of these schools? Plus, all of them have very generous scholarships for kids whose families can't afford to pay full expenses. Most of the schools are still giving over 50% of their students some level of financial aid, many now without any loan requirements at all. The threshold for family income below which a student qualifies for a 100% scholarship is a family income of $70,000 a year or below. They are maintaining this even with the current endowment losses. Vanity Fair should know better.

Harvard in the tank?
Maybe Vanity Fair knows something the public doesn't know.

Maybe the $$$$ aren't coming in because of the liberal status the college has maintained for years????
It isn't just the ecoonomy, the times, they are a changin'...!!!

Harvard go BQ???? I hope so. It produces big Aholes.