Tom Rifley, 27, was a little too long at a dinner with fellow students remained. In order to come to his dormitory, said the graduate student to the chauffeur. The safely brought him back - free of charge, naturally. "Normally I do not," says Rifley. "But on this evening, I found it quite useful." Harvard's own taxi service makes it possible.
The elite university has much of what others do not. A separate Harvard police patrolling around the campus, students can expect psychologists speculate about learning - thanks to a foundation's assets, its volume of the gross national product of smaller states is similar: 37 billion U.S. dollars.
At least it was a few months ago so much value.
For now, the university in the Boston suburb of Cambridge, what universities are all familiar with - financial problems. However, in another gigantic dimension.
Of the approximately 37 billion U.S. dollars eight billion are already gone. And that's just the last officially notified standard has just Edward C. Forst, Harvard vice president for finance, acknowledged that not even all losses are known. The latest quarter is not yet included - and this is expected to be abysmal. At the weekly meeting of financial leaders is "probably 16 billion U.S. dollars' loss of speech, said an institute director, for fear of his job to remain anonymous. Rating agencies estimate that Harvard third of its capital will lose, so 13 billion U.S. dollars.
The Harvard managers are trying now hurry, funds with bad loans loszuschlagen. "This is obviously not Notverkäufe," says Dan Primack stock market expert. "A Notverkauf it would be if you Holst, what you can get. Harvard is not a hopeless case."
"Hey, it's Harvard!"
Harvard and hopeless case? Such semantic combination not previously existed.
This leads to the campus to a mixture of nonchalance and played subdued neuenglischer panic. "I want my master and then get out here," says marketing student Marina Sanchez, 24 It just makes her degree in management and finance. "The cuts will affect my schedule for 2009. Everything is close, there are fewer offers."
Their younger fellow students, as arrogant verschrieenen Freshmen want to know nothing of crisis - after all they pay 47,000 U.S. dollars a year tuition fees. "Yes, we've talked about that the university has lost money," says Sarah, 17, who is currently applying to university. "But, hey, it's Harvard! Other universities do not have as much capital as Harvard has lost."
Malcolm Glenn, editor of the student newspaper The Harvard Crimson, "fluctuates between intelligence and desire harvardgemäßer coolness. "The college is a separate world. There are people who are disproportionately much money. The economic crisis is far away from them," he says. For him as for all the losses coming by "external forces which are stronger than us."
On the "Crimson" special site for financial disaster, there is a telltale sentence: The minus assets of the Foundation showed that "the reality of the crisis has come home." Faculty and Institute managers now get the week to see. "We meet regularly, and managers from the headquarters to see each time from a pale," said the financial manager of an institute. "They have a huge hole, and they simply do not know what to do."
Full noise silence
None of responsibility, called his name. This is new to this university proud.
The savings proposals of a similar revolution. Salaries will be frozen. Formative faculties such as the Medical School, the Faculty of Arts and Science ", or the John F. Kennedy Institute of Government to try teaching, with a 15-percent-minus deal - for now. Because no one knows exactly how much really needs to be sacrificed.
Everywhere are setting stops announced. The relocation of a large part of the university on the other side of the Charles River is as good as deleted.
The university spokesman beschweigen fundamental questions about forces. "We will not discuss investment strategies or even individual investment decisions," said spokesman Joshua Poupore.
Harvard President Drew Faust, however, knows that it is too much secrecy can not afford. Now she writes with wonderful regularity e-mails to the members of the university: "Tough decisions are now no longer be avoided", could now no longer any graduate student fellowships expect.
That is more than the heads of other major U.S. universities do. Nearly all hold a very clear and does not say precisely how hard the financial crisis it has caught the consequences will have - for example, the tuition fees. Most universities have expressed only vague: calendar and financial year had not gone, so there is no solid overview. Financial experts are as concrete. They expect that the assets of U.S. universities by 20 to 30 percent tumble. Many had benefited from the exchange business now and get problems such as Harvard.
At Yale, there is too much: "Obviously, Harvard is experiencing just what most foundations straight through, and we at Yale are not immune" - as it pushed the longtime University President Richard Levin made.
Not only the traditional Efeuliga, as the elite universities called, now threatens the defoliation. State universities have Spar start programs. And do not yet evident is how strong the economic crisis, the willingness of alumni donations will dampen, their former universities traditionally pampered with gifts of money.
Asset affiliated with University
The current crisis reveals a structural problem just senior U.S. universities. If one after the economic indicators go, for example, is less a Harvard University with financial professionals rather than asset management with affiliated university. The heart is the Harvard Management Company (HMC), practically an investment bank. It was the beginning of the nineties established to the money race against the eternal rival Yale not to lose.
Initially in the HMC employs ten employees, now there are well-200th The switch between university leaders and investment banks back and forth - and here lies the problem.
The stock market boom brought a fairytale Harvard Foundation increase its assets by 5.8 billion U.S. dollars in the late eighties to 19.2 billion in 2000 - and just at least 37 billion U.S. dollars. So the university is not only rich but also sensitive and exchange of products, which only took quick profits, but now are discredited. Because the financial jugglers put on private-equity funds and derivatives.
When the HMC began their work, the university still largely conservative investments. In 1995, however, warned the magazine "Forbes, Harvard put" knee-deep in derivatives. "
Derivatives are financial products that, on the finance ministers of the world just to sit court order to prohibit or its trading tightly controlled. Derivatives and highly speculative funds are for the fast collapse of the world financial system responsible. For Harvard, on the other hand, they were the most productive capital, with a return on investment of up to 23 percent fabulous.
Displeasure over the moon salaries of fund managers
Now they are loss-making, morally and financially.
There were at the university have always critical questions about the investments. Professors annoyed that they 250,000 U.S. dollars earned in the year - while the HMC-Boss young traders bonuses of up to 35 million U.S. dollars paid.
Ex-Minister of Labor Robert Reich railed, the gigantic foundation assets was "absurd". The economics professor Jeffrey Sachs said: "It is so good, so much money, but just for what purpose?"
Still, the intelligentsia of the University of the debate is not public. Once the losses are announced but will Harvard true capital to speak. And the criticism of the staff starts already.
"For me there was always a contradiction between an investment bank and a place of higher education," said Robert Holt recently from the Chemistry Department. The medical professor Paul Farmer discussed at a conference at John F. Kennedy School of the University of the future: "It is not a question of a new Lehman Brothers Bank building - follow her dream of a fair education!"
The internationally recognized anti-tuberculosis Activist Farmer directed this sentence about the bankrupt investment bank formally at a critical business students. Intentioned but he has someone else: Harvard President Drew Faust - she sat with him on the podium.
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