, Columnist
Harvard Endowment Needs to Lower Fees, Not Pay
The cost of private assets and hedge funds is a bigger problem than executive compensation.
The 2-and-20 club is becoming much too expensive.
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
This article is for subscribers only.
The battle over investment fees is coming to a college campus near you.
A group of Harvard University alumni known as the Class of 1969 Ad Hoc Committee on Harvard’s Endowment Management recently complained in a letter to Harvard President Lawrence Bacow that the university’s endowment is overpaying its top executives. The group has been criticizing pay at the endowment since 2003, but with performance sagging at Harvard and other big university endowments in recent years, investment fees are likely to be scrutinized more than ever.