The UH System Board of Regents Endowment Management Committee decided to decrease the System’s spending by an estimated $900,000 from fiscal year 2009 while maintaining the same amount of payouts in scholarships at Friday’s meeting.
‘Our primary concern is to issue as many scholarships as possible,’ said Carl Carlucci, UH System vice chancellor for Administration and Finance. ‘We will use money from other funds to keep our scholarship accounts in full.’
The board decided to reduce spending to 4 percent from 5 percent for fiscal year 2010. UH will lessen funds spent on areas such as travel, opting to rely on the Internet instead for video conferences and communication needs. The University will also cut back on administration costs such as office equipment in order to sustain funds allocated for scholarships.’
‘One of the components of the endowment that we’ve really focused on is (UH System Chancellor Renu Khator’s) priority of scholarships. She really wants us to have the capacity to offer our students a full ride wherever possible. We’re doing our best to increase that capacity,’ committee chair Carroll Ray said.’
While other universities such as Harvard and Yale are reporting decreases as large as 30 percent in endowment funding, the drop in funding for UH is not as drastic as other universities are facing, Ray said.
‘Harvard and Yale are private institutions, and private institutions historically have much higher levels of endowment. State-institution endowments are less because there is a certain amount of support from the state,’ Ray said. ‘As a state-supported institution, our endowment was not huge, but it was robust ‘hellip; and we would like to become huge.’
Ray said Khator is focused on increasing donor funds to the University.
‘One of Dr. Khator’s goals was to develop better relationships with the alumni group and to help them with their maintaining connections with all of our alumni and letting them see the value of supporting the University. That has resulted in a huge increase in our alumni support,’ he said.
Vice Chancellor for University Advancement Michael Rierson said donations from alumni have more than doubled since last year.
‘We’ve increased our alumni giving from about 3 to 4 percent to 10 percent,’ Rierson said.
Cambridge Associates, a financial advisory group to the board, discussed ways in which the downturned economy has affected the endowment fund. Hamilton Lee, an advisor from the firm, said the $100 per barrel drop in oil ‘has been a fiscal stimulus in itself’ because it helps the market.
The board decided to invest funds in more diversified and conservative markets in order to prevent the endowment from decreasing at a faster rate.
