Correction: The NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments found that Syracuse University brought in $658,248,000 in endowment funds in 2009, as opposed to $984,779,000 in 2008. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Syracuse University experienced a 33.2 percent decline in endowment funds from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009, the highest percentage drop for a top 100-endowment university in the United States, according to the NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments.

Institutions saw an average decrease of 18.7 percent in endowment funding returns for the 2009 fiscal year, said William Jarvis, the managing director and head of research at the Commonfund Institute. This is the most serious downturn in decades, and possibly since the Great Depression, he said.

The report found that SU brought in $658,248 in endowment funds in 2009, as opposed to $984,779 in 2008.

The SU endowment fund shortfall and declining economy already prompted the university to engage in an emergency scholarship tuition fundraiser in December of 2008 and decrease spending. Most recently, Chancellor Nancy Cantor proposed a cost-cutting employee benefit program last month.

Although the decline in endowment had broad effects, Louis Marcoccia, the chief financial officer at SU, said the university’s losses did not change its ability to continue funding critical construction projects, hiring faculty members and providing financial aid for students.

National endowments have recovered since March, although they are not completely back to where they used to be, Jarvis said. It will take years for endowments to return to previous values, assuming that markets continue to rise, he said.

Institutions that have a high degree of endowment dependency for their operating budgets have taken the biggest hit, Jarvis said.

Many universities have had to cut a large portion of their operations by issuing travel bans on faculty, laying off staff and establishing strict guidelines for department spending to make up for their losses, he said.

At most institutions, the availability of financial aid is conditioned on the endowment, Jarvis said. If endowment has less value, then financial aid is likely to decrease, he said.

But Marcoccia assured that the university has no intentions of decreasing the amount of financial aid available for its students.

The financial aid budget has increased 11 percent over the past few years, said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, the associate vice president at the office of financial aid and scholarship programs.

Although a part of financial aid is supported by endowment, the budget was also supported by other sources of income, such as tuition revenues, to make up for the loss, she said.

Tammy Schlafer, the executive director of annual giving, said she noticed a decrease in donations for the 2009 fiscal year.

‘Many alums, whether experiencing personal difficulty or not, elected to be a little more conservative,’ she said.

Although the state of the economy affected the amount of donations, there were many donors who were still able to contribute to the school, Schlafer said.

At the end of 2009, the university reached $700 million toward its $1 billion fundraising campaign, said Marcoccia, SU’s CFO. Most people are reasonably confident that the $1 billion goal can be reached by 2012, as long as SU maintains to pace at $100 million a year, he said.

‘Chancellor Nancy Cantor made a commitment to keep the momentum of the university on pace,’ Marcoccia said. ‘We’re trying to sustain the momentum, but we need to be prudent and as efficient and effective as we can.’

shkim11@syr.edu

Published on February 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm