[Ken H]

My hedge fund sources tell me Yale has lost $7.65 billion in the past 12 months.

For some reason, I was thinking the Yale endowment was on the order of $12B to $15B prior to the downturn. Do you know the figure?

Also, why the hell would they go with hedge funds? Why not just allocate their money among mutual funds indexed to the stock and bond markets?

[FreepShop1]

No, the Yale endowment was $29.6 b at its peak, and $22.6 b at its last report on June 30th 2008.

[TigerLikesRooster]

It's $ 22.870 billion, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._colleges_and_universities_by_endowment .