Post Gazette: "Carnegie Mellon University has joined other schools in disclosing steep financial losses this year amid the recession, reporting a nearly 23 percent drop in net assets as of June 30 and endowment losses approaching 27 percent.
The university's 'overall financial position remains solid despite the extraordinary turmoil' in the economy and capital markets, vice president and chief financial officer Deborah Moon said in a summary contained in the school's newly released consolidated financial statements."
3 comments:
Well, here we are, starting to see prominent results in CMU's budget. Now, I know this is overall budget, but what will this affect in terms of cutbacks? Will jobs be lost? I hope not? What may happen is prices could go up on campus while departmental budget allocations go down. It would be a bit sad to see the Drama Department's budget go down, but at the same time it would be a good test for us. Yes, money can solve lots of problems, but we see at Playground how much phenomenal work you can do with so little resources. It could force our designers to become more crafty with how they approach designs, knowing that the budget may be lower, or it could possibly hinder the design process. It will also be a test for the management, to see how far you can stretch a dollar. I'm not sure if we'll even feel a strong affect of the economic impact, we may, but hopefully the department won't look at it as a setback, more so as a new challenge we have to adapt around.
Along the same lines as Liz, I think our mainstage productions could really benefit from a budget "challenge". Coming from a design background, and how we are constantly being pushed to "jump over the edge", I don't see a lot of that mindset translated into our mainstage productions.
I'm also curious about the timing of CMU purchasing the property down by Craig Street, and wondering if right now was really the most opportune time to do that.
It's interesting to see how they lead with the loss in investment market value to make it seem like CMU is going broke and then bury the fact that the university has an operating surplus - in other words, CMU is making a profit, not losing money. If the market value of the investments is down then it's just a matter for the accountants and auditors until they want to sell it - I've got my own investments that I've watched the market values drop on, but I also know I don't plan to touch them for several years so the value now only means that if I had any extra cash I'd be buying more of almost everything I have as investments at the moment.
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