幸运的大学，幸运的禀赋也赋予了复杂的责任。这些包括对投资和支出决定最终使该机构，其学生和其他利益攸关方的决定进行决定 - 今天，明天和数十年来。
Most schools face a core set of objectives, including attracting students by ensuring strong programs and tuition affordability, maintaining and upgrading facilities, compensating faculty competitively, appealing to donors — and doing all of that without spending the endowment into oblivion, so that generations of stakeholders benefit equitably.
Periodically, policymakers and pundits will point to大学和大学拥有大型捐赠并建议他们需要每年花费最低百分比的捐赠，以维持他们的非营利组织，免税地位。毕竟，私人基金会每年需要5％的捐赠的市场价值。但是，我们相信所需的最低要求在学校养老支出上，虽然可能是令人误导的，但对学生和教育机构也不只是误导。
与基础不同,可以应付反证法n in grant making when investment returns are low, universities cannot modulate spending with such agility. University endowments fund several operations that would be devastated by big cuts to research, compensation and student aid. Therefore, universities seek to maintain predictability in their annual dollar level of spending by paying out a lower percentage of assets when market values rise to compensate for their limited ability to readily cut expenditures when market values fall.
Getting spending right is critical for every school. The hard reality is that setting spending rates above reasonable long-term investment returns can deprive future generations of the benefits endowments provide. What long-term return expectation is reasonable? It’s a tough question.剑桥员工’ research shows that 7 percent is too high for most institutions. And the 5 percent mandated for foundations could be reasonable for some university endowments but certainly not all.
这是一些视角。如果您回顾，在调整通货膨胀后，中位数大学和学院捐赠者在不到四分之一的滚动十年期内超过了9％的回报，超过了过去30年的时间不到40％的收益，根据我们的数据。当您认为最近有一个建议，为大学捐赠的8％支出要求，这是Sobering。引用的原因是近年来一些最重要资金的令人惊叹的增长。
20世纪70年代提供了关于支出和外推到未来的强大绩效的警告信息。在截至1968年至1982年的熊市期间，捐赠基金价值下降了40％至60％。面临成本上涨，机构试图避免从已经耗尽的桶的底部开支和快速排出的资金。在20世纪90年代初，最佳管理的捐赠者并没有恢复。最近，即使大学和大学禀赋已经产生了自2008年级金融危机以来的恒星返回，众多尚未从他们的预测高度恢复到过支出和通货膨胀时尚未从他们的预定高度恢复。
简单的数学表明，今天的支出实际上意味着赚钱，花费更多。复合资产的力量 - 大学没有花费 - 随着时间的推移，可以增加学费和其他举措的禀赋支持。每年分别采取两笔1亿美元捐赠的极端例子，分别支出5％和8％。通胀后，假设投资回报是9％，这是侵略性的。在短短17年中，捐赠8％的捐赠将以美元的赔偿少于捐赠5％。为什么？因为高水平的支出将耗资捐赠的金库，因为它的市场价值仅为其他捐赠者中的60％，这将以更可持续的5％的速度花费。
The bottom line is that a requirement for endowments to lay out a fixed percentage of market value each year would heighten volatility in operating budgets and risk depleting endowments and, therefore, resources for students and institutions over time.
相关说明：随着呼叫支出要求，捐赠有时会收到批评大型投资经理费用，特别是私募股权基金，这是许多人的来源successful endowments’ coveted excess returns。Yet forward-thinking institutions that invest for the long term focus not on fees in isolation but on terms and returns after fees. It would be wrong to believe that spending less on fees necessarily translates to higher net returns. The reality is that the better the endowment’s performance after fees, the higher the tab.
Ponder the following comparison. The Yale Investments Office’s private equity portfolio returned an annual 36 percent net of fees over the past 20 years. A substitute investment in a fund tracking the Russell 3000 index would have earned less than 10 percent. The difference between the two numbers — the excess return — is more than 26 percentage points after fees. This excess return is now available to支持耶鲁的运营包括学生经济援助。
一个想要忍受和发展的学校需要其禀赋不仅要留下，而且还要以允许该机构达到越来越多的费用，实现服务整体使命的目标。每个学院和大学都需要开发自己的投资支出平衡行为版本。
This is a prodigious responsibility, and it belongs in the hands of endowment trustees, who have a legal and fiduciary responsibility to ensure that the endowment provides the greatest possible financial support not only to the current generation but also to those who will follow in their footsteps.
西莉亚达拉斯是弗吉尼亚州的阿灵顿的首席投资策略家剑桥员工那a Boston-based research and advisory firm for institutional investors.
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