Making the case for more aggressive investment strategies instead of docile endowment universities funds.

Most West-based universities like Harvard, Penn State, Stanford and even Columbia are sitting pretty on sizable donated assets, which are earning the secured returns of safe avenues of average four percent per annual. Isn't it time to shake the coy set-up of doners, trustees, alumni, and public administrators, who had limited intricate knowledge of high finance universe.

But then what are endowment funds ? Are they first and foremost, investment for the uni's upkeep, infrastructure works, or paying of pension and even supports of payment of vast salary bills, and numerous employee benefits. For a fund size of ten billion point one, to return four percent as against a better return of between seven to nearly eight would fund that Pulitzer Award to better Man Brooker. Ten thousand smaskers are a lot less than one hundred thousand English pound sterling.

Don't even think about Noble. But then university presses can't even withstand the financial pressure of two textbook publishing a year. A crying shame for the academic head of their lawyer president. Oxford may be number one in the world, but Cambridge press is the oldest. The former has a teeming separate department, the most American universities presses are a crying letdown.

What will endowment for the safe and sickly do. Invest in US treasury bonds of 10 years benchmark, or deep into state and municipality bonds of low interest of three percent. Investment in eight assets world must be explored with factored eighty percent of funds into secure investments and twenty percent into blue chip equities. Land property rent offers nearly eight to ten percent.

Or is a safe CFA a certification and traditional American financial wizards a past, for global master of their universe and for their enlightened non-profit asset management. -End