Several top university systems have multibillion-dollar endowments — pools of money set aside for future needs — and also allow campuses to charge different tuitions to better finance campuses with higher research ambitions.
The group that oversees Duke University's endowment steered its $1.7 billion pool of capital to a 59percentt gain in the year ended June 30.
Dr. Gutmann, 54, will succeed Judith Rodin, who became the first woman to head an Ivy League institution, then led the university through a decade of significant growth in its endowment, research funding, applicant pool and selectivity.
In Dr. Rodin's 10 years at Penn, the university's research money more than doubled, its annual gifts and endowment tripled, its applicant pool grew and its admissions office became more selective.
A friend, Alice Handy, had started a money management company that pooled the endowment money of a number of smaller universities that might not have otherwise been able to make certain kinds of investments.
UC Investments has about $100 billion in its investment portfolio, including a pension fund, an endowment and other capital pools.
In that period, the university's research money has more than doubled, its annual gifts and endowment have tripled, its applicant pool has grown, and its admissions office has become more selective.
"The positive note is that we did not give back a lot" of the post-holiday rally, said Michael Strauss, a managing director of Commonfund, an investment pool for college endowments.
Dartmouth has frequently tapped that pool to fill its endowment portfolio.
Instead of making a gift to an endowment and having it go into this pool, why not use that capital to further the mission of microfinance?
