NEPC’s mega-endowments white paper data was recently featured in an article to discuss what caused many smaller universities to outperform larger university endowments in 2023. View the full article on Chief Investment Officer’s site here.
What allowed the U.C. San Diego Foundation to outperform all of its university endowment peers last year? Its equity-heavy portfolio.
The $1.4 billion university endowment for the University of California, San Diego returned 11.3% in fiscal year 2023, which ended June 30, 2023, the highest reported return of any endowment with more than $1 billion in assets for the period, according to data tracked by NEPC LLC.
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Of the 62 endowments with assets of more than $1 billion tracked by NEPC, six had negative returns in fiscal year 2023. The University of North Carolina, Duke University, Princeton University, Vanderbilt University, Washington University St. Louis and MIT endowments returned losses of 0.4%, 1.0%, 1.7%, 2.0%, 2.3%, and 2.9%, respectively.
What united these funds was their very high allocations to alternative investments, which generally underperformed other asset classes in the fiscal year, most notably private equity.
Click here to read the full interview on Chief Investment Officer’s site.