The NYT story is here.
Here’s Campos:
… Only when [national university] rankings expanded in the mid-1990s to encompass 50 and then 100 schools in numerical order did GW appear on these lists. Like the vast majority of colleges and universities, George Washington’s ranking has always been very stable. The school lurked and continues to lurk on the edge of the top 50, with practically no variation in its ranking from year to year. This suggests, of course, that what [ex-president Stephen] Trachtenberg did for the school’s overall reputation was exactly nothing, although his ability to convince credulous journalists that he had taken a humble inexpensive commuter school and transformed it into a high-priced academic powerhouse no doubt played a role in helping raise his salary by the time he departed to $3.7 million. (To the — very considerable — extent that a university’s endowment can be considered a proxy for its overall academic status, the history of GW’s endowment suggests strongly that the school’s status didn’t improve at all during Trachtenberg’s tenure.)
… Stephen Joel Trachtenberg might be considered academia’s king of meta-bullshit. His oft-repeated claims that he cynically and successfully exploited the Veblenesque yearnings of America’s middle and upper classes in order to make George Washington University much richer and more prestigious turns out to be just so much bullshit. But what most certainly isn’t bullshit is that he managed to exploit those claims themselves — although the prime beneficiary of those claims turned out not to be the institution that ended up paying him millions of dollars a year for his services.
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UD thanks Dr_Doctorstein for the link to Campos.
February 13th, 2015 at 2:47PM
” . . . [U]niversity’s endowment can be considered a proxy for its overall academic status . . . .”
I like Paul Campos. But, our local Podunk Tech’s endowment has increased twenty-fold (unadjusted) the last half-century. I don’t believe there’s any connection at all with academic standing. I’m just as sure I’d have my ears chewed off if I were to make a statement like that in public.
February 13th, 2015 at 3:57PM
A 20-fold increase in nominal terms in a university endowment over the past 50 years is well below average, at least for institutions with significant endowments. That’s not even a tripling in constant dollars.
If you look at a list of the colleges and universities with the largest endowments, and especially the largest endowments relative to enrollment, it pretty much tracks rankings of academic status.
February 13th, 2015 at 4:57PM
What do you think about this, UD? Trachtenberg always seemed to be overpaid and a bit of a showboater to me, but at least in my areas, GW’s reputation has improved over the last couple of decades.
February 13th, 2015 at 5:17PM
tp: Here’s what I’d say. The school’s burgeoning popularity among applicants, and therefore the improvement of the undergraduate applicant pool, cannot be denied. The ground of that popularity may be flimsy, or may have, under Trachtenberg, been flimsy, but my sense is that over the years the quality of the school – most components of the school – has indeed improved significantly.
Trachtenberg, even if he’d demonstrably made miraculous changes at the school, was obscenely overpaid. When I discovered that he apparently advises the administration of Yeshiva University, with its similarly unconscionably overpaid president, I wasn’t surprised.
OTOH, Paul is right that GW’s general ranking hasn’t budged much.
February 14th, 2015 at 3:45AM
Paul, thanks. Is there any rationale for university endowments socking their money into offshore accounts?
February 14th, 2015 at 6:35AM
Jack, I’m not familiar with that practice so I can’t comment on it.
The extraordinary explosion in university endowments over the past 30 years is an under-reported story. It’s one of the overlooked consequences of the new gilded age. If Carey had been aware of it he would have realized that GW’s endowment actually didn’t do well at all, relatively speaking, under Trachtenberg, and that GW was already a rich and expensive school in the late 1980s, not the humble commuter college presented in the NYT piece, and that there’s no real evidence that the school’s place in the overall academic pecking order moved under him (certain departments may have improved of course, but Trachtenberg is making much grander claims).
I’ve seen Trachtenberg successfully pitch this wildly inaccurate version of his tenure for years now, and it’s annoying that he’s still at it.
February 14th, 2015 at 10:49AM
University reputations do tend to be very stable, especially in the northeast and midwest. Improving attractiveness to undergraduate applicants is a pretty big deal, probably more important than endowment performance, as there has been significant sorting and resorting in this realm. (That Washington has been a boomtown has helped GWU.) Trachtenberg’s achievement appears from this distance to be somewhat similar to John Silber’s at Boston University: the institution is in much better shape than it used to be, but not necessarily in a higher position among American research universities.
February 14th, 2015 at 12:37PM
Why would endowment growth be a good proxy for the university’s reputation? Intuitively it would seem to measure (a) skill of the financial management of the endowment funds, at least if looked at over and long time period, and (b) the emotional connection that alumni developed to the university during their student years, which may or may not have anything to do with actual *learning*.
How many people really think, “Well, I made a kazillion dollars and I owe it all to my good old Alma Mater”?
February 14th, 2015 at 4:13PM
Paul, about a quarter of the endowment is in the Caribbean and Europe. I once casually asked an insider about it. His reply? Taxes. When I mentioned the fund’s tax exemption, he answered: better return on investment. I guess I learned something. Don’t ask questions.
February 14th, 2015 at 5:29PM
Why would endowment growth be a good proxy for the university’s reputation?
Paul didn’t say ‘the faster the endowment growth, the more prestigious the institution.’ He said that the size of a college’s endowment roughly correlates with its reputation.
In 2015, the top-ranked colleges according to US News were:
1. Princeton University (NJ)
2. Harvard University (MA)
3. Yale University (CT)
4. Columbia University (NY)
4. Stanford University (CA)
4. University of Chicago (IL)
7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
8. Duke University (NC)
8. University of Pennsylvania
10. California Institute of Technology
The colleges with the highest endowments (in 2013) were:
Harvard University (MA)
Yale University (CT)
Princeton University (NJ)
Stanford University (CA)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
Columbia University (NY)
Texas A&M University—College Station
University of Pennsylvania
University of Notre Dame (IN)
7 out of 10 ain’t bad for a basic correlation.
February 15th, 2015 at 2:29AM
Paul, can you speak to the fact that endowments have been investing in SLABS (Student Loan Asset Back Securities)? I know in the past that was done. I’m assuming it still is, but I don’t know the extent. Thanks….