The economy may continue to stagger along, performing unimpressively, but at least college endowments are up, a little.
According to an article By Manuela Badawy at Reuters:
U.S. college and university endowments returned an average 19.8 percent for fiscal 2011, up from 11.9 percent a year earlier, but have yet to recover from the 2008-2009 credit crisis, a study showed on Monday.
Unsurprisingly, big endowments did better than small ones. According to the piece:
Those endowments with assets between $25 million and $50 million returned the lowest average of 18.9 percent, while the highest average return of 20.3 percent was reported by endowments with assets between $51 million and $100 million.
These endowment returns are higher than last year but still, Badawy explains, “the average endowment is still at only 86 percent of its value in fiscal year 2007.”
It’s probably going to take many years before endowments return, if they ever do, to where they were during the rocking good economic times that preceded the Great Recession.
