For the fiscal year ending in June 2009, Yale’s endowment fell 24.6 percent. In that same time period, Chief Investment Officer David Swensen’s salary and benefits totaled $5.3 million, up from $4.3 million in ’07-’08. Some people think this is an outrage. Today University administrators explained the rationale behind Swensen’s package.
On Wall Street or even at other universities, they say, the several million Swensen makes yearly would be a pittance for an investor as renowned as he is. Endowment managers at Harvard have earned as much as $35 million recently, dwarfing Swensen’s and Takahashi’s pay. “Here’s a guy who could make 10 times his salary,” former deputy provost Charles Long said of Swensen last April. “But his goal is to make as much money as he can for Yale.”
