A New Crew for NYU:

New York University opened its doors in 1831 and it’s now the biggest private college in the country by enrollment.

But their $3.4 billion endowment is relatively small for a large private US university (it’s only the 28th-largest) and its performance hasn’t been very impressive. 

We’ve paid much more attention to their uptown rival, Columbia University, whose $9.2 billion endowment is bigger, higher-performing, and officially Ivy League.  We ranked Columbia and Yale tied for number one by 10-year performance in our annual review of Ivy and Alt-Ivy endowments.  See: https://www.charlesskorina.com/ivy-endowments-performance-pay-2014/

It’s nothing personal.  Greenwich Village is one of our favorite places; and any school that could give the world both Woody Allen and Alan Greenspan must be taken seriously.

Now there’s been a changing of the guard at NYU and we think some attention should be paid.

Michael Steinhardt, who had led the school’s investment committee since 1996, resigned last June.  Tina Surh, chief investment officer since 2010, announced her own resignation six months later.  NYU’s president, John Sexton, who’s had a long but stormy run, is stepping down in January.  And, long-time board chairman Martin Lipton, sometimes described as the school’s real power-broker, will be succeeded in October by insurance executive William R. Berkley.