Penn Needs Extenze

The Inquirer reports on Penn’s incredible shrinking endowment. Let’s do the quote of an article quoting another article!

During the 2008 fiscal year, of the 20 universities with the largest endowments, “the largest percentage decrease was at the University of Pennsylvania, which lost 6.1 percent of its endowment’s value, or $401.9 million,” Inside Higher Education reported in this article.

This is funny. A few years ago, the argument was that Penn’s endowment wouldn’t lose as much money this decade because it hadn’t made as much money during the late-90s tech boom, and its holdings were stronger positioned going into the future.

Hell, as recently as November the headline in the Daily Pennsylvanian was, “Penn may post fewer endowment losses than other Ivies.” The same argument about Penn’s endowment that was applied to tech stocks is applied to the housing market in that one. The economy has completely imploded since the end of fiscal year 2008, so Penn actually could be right this time.

On the other hand, it is Penn, so my guess is they’ll be selling off buildings to make payroll by next week.