Next "Big Picture" Project at SMU?

[StallionsModelT]

Now that the Bush Library is open and the Second Century campaign is winding down, what are the next "big picture" agenda items for SMU? In casual conversations with fellow alums it would seem that growing the endowment needs to be the next action item to attack. There has been such a glut of construction on campus with still more to come through 2015 that I can't imagine SMU wants to do a lot of building in the next 5-10 years. I think the next major agenda item should be getting the endowment to 2B.

[Greenwich Pony]

I agree that the endowment may be a key issue as we seem to be falling behind peer institutions in that area.

I would imagine the next steps will focus on the research functions of the university, as they bring in all-important grant money. Some sort of public health or medical faculty (perhaps not a full-blown medical school, perhaps something along the lines of Brown's medical faculty) is probably the most traditional route, but expanded research and conference facilities will be a must, if they decide to got the medical route or the engineering and social sciences route. It would also help to get the mess of our press sorted out a bit more, not just with traditional publishing but epublishing as well and greatly enhance our media relations office. Research, conferences and publicity are the three primary elements necessary to build academic reputation and what we will need to move into the top 50 and stay there.

However, at this juncture, I'd be happy to see them actually refurbish the library, build the band hall, tennis center and natatorium and basically fulfill the promises of this campaign. We seems to be $714 million into a $750 million campaign and we don't seem to be able to build what we set out to build and actually fund what we planned to fund.

[ponyboy]

Who are our peer institutions? Duke and Vandy?

[Digetydog]

I agree that the endowment may be a key issue as we seem to be falling behind peer institutions in that area.

I would imagine the next steps will focus on the research functions of the university, as they bring in all-important grant money. Some sort of public health or medical faculty (perhaps not a full-blown medical school, perhaps something along the lines of Brown's medical faculty) is probably the most traditional route, but expanded research and conference facilities will be a must, if they decide to got the medical route or the engineering and social sciences route. It would also help to get the mess of our press sorted out a bit more, not just with traditional publishing but epublishing as well and greatly enhance our media relations office. Research, conferences and publicity are the three primary elements necessary to build academic reputation and what we will need to move into the top 50 and stay there.

However, at this juncture, I'd be happy to see them actually refurbish the library, build the band hall, tennis center and natatorium and basically fulfill the promises of this campaign. We seems to be $714 million into a $750 million campaign and we don't seem to be able to build what we set out to build and actually fund what we planned to fund.

We should buy into UT Southwestern. Some sort of joint venture could be good for both schools.

[gostangs]

The band hall is under construction. Data center and related utilities are under construction, tennis to start as soon as utilities will allow, probably July

I agree endowment needs to get to 2b. Long way to go there. I think we will bump up this campaign to 1b and announce that by yr end (total guess)

Research is huge. Simmons is big help, but we need more medical for sure. Grad school would not work due to dollar requirement. That's a tough nut.

I can see nat and ipf in next wave. Maybe Simmons next building, but we need to take a break on bldgs and build endowment

[StallionsModelT]

This might be a stupid question but how does the school actually "grow" the endowment? I know some it is investments and what not but I'm curious to know how we can actually grow our endowment to the 2B mark.

[Digetydog]

This might be a stupid question but how does the school actually "grow" the endowment? I know some it is investments and what not but I'm curious to know how we can actually grow our endowment to the 2B mark.

The endowment can be grown by increasing revenues (investment returns and gifts)and by reducing spending. Because the first two aren't that controversial, I will focus on the last.

Reduced Spending is very controversial. Let's say the school has an endowment of $1B and earns 5% on its money. What should it do with the $50m?
Banking it results in a growing endowment. Alternatively, $50m could be used to reduce tuition for a large number of students. Simply put, raising tuition while sitting on a huge endowment angers people and congress has threatened to force schools to "spend" their endowment.

Because it has such an enormous endowment generating a huge amount of cash, Yale now offers undergrads "no loan" financial aid packets.


Interesting Story: http://chronicle.com/article/Why-the-En ... bate/64527

[StallionsModelT]

I wonder how much of the "return on investment" factor was considered in building the new Residential Commons? The way I see it if I'm SMU, I want as many students living on campus as possible not just for the increased foot traffic and energy around campus, but also that is money for the university. Every student that chooses to live in off-campus housing is money lost for SMU. I know its costing a small fortune to build (I want to say I've heard numbers around $150M), but I do see the Residential Commons as a long-term investment for SMU. Not to mention they look awesome from the highway and really make for a bold statement alongside the Bush Library.

As for the tennis center, how much is that going to cost? I haven't seen any estimates on that. When its complete that will also be a really cool and visible structure for SMU.

At that point the only major hurdle we will have is getting the damn IPF. That is so paramount if we want to be playing big boy football.

[Greenwich Pony]

I think working something out with UT Southwestern is probably feasable. The launch of a medical program is expensive, but we (okay, technically somebody) just spent $500 million on building the library and endowing the Bush center. It would probably cost that much as an initial investment for a small medical program, if we worked a deal with a local medical center, thuis being the centerpiece of the next big campaign. Of course that wouldn't put us with Harvard or JHU or Duke, but it would be a start.

A similar investment in a research center would probably be the alternative. To really join our target peer schools (without medical schools), we'd need roughly $60-$80 million in research funding (as of today) and I believe at the moment we are somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million. Aside from the endowment this research number is the next biggest issue for "big-picture" improvement.

The good news is that our location may be a help with so many high tech companies nearby for joint research. But we don;t have the facilities and faculty yet.

[StallionsModelT]

If we are able to reach 20,000 applications for 1,600 incoming students then I would think our acceptance rate would have to go down quite a bit. I'd think somewhere in the 40-45% range.

[PK]

I think working something out with UT Southwestern is probably feasable. The launch of a medical program is expensive, but we (okay, technically somebody) just spent $500 million on building the library and endowing the Bush center. It would probably cost that much as an initial investment for a small medical program, if we worked a deal with a local medical center, thuis being the centerpiece of the next big campaign. Of course that wouldn't put us with Harvard or JHU or Duke, but it would be a start.

A similar investment in a research center would probably be the alternative. To really join our target peer schools (without medical schools), we'd need roughly $60-$80 million in research funding (as of today) and I believe at the moment we are somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million. Aside from the endowment this research number is the next biggest issue for "big-picture" improvement.

The good news is that our location may be a help with so many high tech companies nearby for joint research. But we don;t have the facilities and faculty yet.

Unless things have changed recently, my understanding is that we have a very good pre-med program. One would think piggybacking on to that would be a very feasible way to work with UT Southwestern.

[friarwolf]

Maybe I am wrong but the first two initials in UT Southwestern makes me think UT would kill this idea in a nano-second.........

SMU's endowment investing performance has been below average and that needs to change. I don't know who makes the investments but whomever it is should be fired......

[StallionsModelT]

Anybody know roughly how much the tennis center is projected to cost?

[East Coast Mustang]

Rick Perry Presidential Center

[rodrod5]

I would say it would be difficult to buy into UTSW for several reasons none of them having to do with UT Austin

1. it is state and private mixing.....this is actually not unprecedented because in New York Cornell is a private university, but parts of it (the land grant/ag, the industrial relations and another part or two) are actually state supported with different admissions requirements than the university overall and SUNY ESF (Suny Forestry) has agreements with Syracuse right next door for students tot ake classes hassle free at each university and even in Texas The State of Texas provides money each year to Baylor Medical in Houston to train a specific number of doctors

2. UTA and UTD......both really would like to lay claim to UTSW (and that will probably never happen for either of them) and both work with UTSW, but not as much as either would like I am sure and if anything was going to be done to increase collaboration with a local university and UTSW I am sure UTD and UTA would want to be at the front of the line

3. I personally think a better idea would be to start a private university consortium medical school (actually located in Fort Worth) with SMU, TCU, Baylor and perhaps UDallas, Southwestern in Gerogetown and Austin College and maybe Texas Wesleyan....Fort Worth has the desire for a medical school for sure and they have the not that nice (cheap to buy) land in the area between JPS, Kindred, Cook and the like that is begging for something like a med school to move in to redevelop the area and get it rolling

4. UTSW has issues to work through right now....they are not major issues, but the controversy over resident supervision, Parkland billing and accounting issues and TAMU Medical working with Baylor Hospital and the Scott and White Baylor merger removing UTSW residents from Baylor Hospital for a new agreement for TAMU Medical residents means that UTSW has their plate full for the next few years squaring all of that away

to build endowment funds you simply need to have money donated to the university placed in the endowment instead of being directly spent to build a facility or equip a lab ect......if you get 100 million for a building and build that building debt free that is fantastic, but it does nothing for the endowment, but if you get 100 million for "projects" or faculty chairs or scholarships that money goes into the endowment and the payout from that simply funds the intended purposes....and yes an improved rate of return on current endowments helps as well and a lower spending rate (below 5% or whatever it currently is helps as well)

5. as for congress this is why the USA is in the shape it is in it is run by idiots.....the issue with "rich" universities with large endowments actually came up RIGHT BEFORE the major stock market crash when some endowments (large and small) took hits as large as 25 or 30%

what type of an idiot does not believe things like that happen (especially when they JUST HAPPENED) and even worse what type of idiot (other than one involved in government) does not understand that if you increase the payout from your endowment, hire more faculty, build more buildings, enroll more students for cheaper tuition.....ALL OF THOSE THINGS INVOLVE MORE OVERHEAD that has to be SUPPORTED AND MAINTAINED and the money to support and maintain that has to come from somewhere even in good times and bad

so spending more from an endowment is a triple hit.....you spend more so the endowment grows slower and either barely keeps up with inflation or it is not in a position to weather down markets, you have more infrastructure, staff and students to support and when the down markets come you have to eat a larger % of the corpus of the endowment (since you are getting NEGATIVE or ZERO rates of return) just to keep up with the infrastructure and faculty and students you have and then you are growing out of the down market even slower because you have eaten further into the corpus of the endowment which means at some point you hit a brick wall and everything grinds to a halt or you have to raise tuition or both....this is a classic way to run an endowment or a trust fund into the ground and to go broke when you are 50 years old because you were a "big spenda" between the ages of 20-40....the amazing thing is with so many trust fund idiot babies in congress they can't seem to understand this idea....anyone in congress that is pushing universities to spend more of their endowment that themselves has a trust fund, annuity, or large investment portfolio should themselves be FORCED to spend 20% of the corpus of that fund YEARLY so they can know what it is like to wake up one day with a bunch of crap like houses and cars and ex wives and kids that require money to be maintained and they can look at their investment portfolio that has a corpus that is shrinking daily and going to zero much less paying out the money needed to maintain all the crap they spent the money on

it is the exact same thing as when the economy is good and tax revenues are up because the economy is doing well you go out and spend a bunch of money on new buildings, raise salaries, put playground equipment all over the place, build roads (fail to maintain existing infrastructure) and further "pump the economy higher" with all of you new found free tax income "wealth" and then when the economy declines (never happens) you suddenly are not getting the tax revenues any longer, you have bloated government and high salaries and liabilities, a bunch of new infrastructure and the old stuff you never fixed up to keep paying for.....so the answer of course to "stimulate the economy" is to RAISE TAXES!!! and have GOVERNMENT get everyone BACK TO WORK!!!!! YEA!!!

of course the real answer is to SAVE (endow) some of that tax money that is coming in during the good times (moving on up) and REFRAIN from building new infrastructure while the economy is up and prices are high and refrain from adding new employees unless absolutely needed and then when the economy is down you have those SAVED assets to come in with and perform infrastructure improvements when cost are lower, there is a need for employment, and you can refrain from further hurting the economy by laying off all of those workers you did not need to hire during the good times and you can refrain from further damaging the economy further by raising taxes and you will actually BENEFIT the economy because you have money that was socked away in safe fixed income investments (endowed when times were good and rates of return were positive) that you are now drawing down on to perform government projects

but of course when you are not dealing with your own personal trust fund and endowments and when taking just a little more here and there in the form of an increase or a fee or a user license or a stamp ect one does not need to give consideration to prudent and long proven actuary and investment performance planning you just need to go get some more "free" money and spend it

6. as of now I would say research performance for SMU should be the #1 priority especially in Engineering, Hard/Physical Sciences, Geo Sciences and Nursing since that is where the demand for graduates is and that is where the research money is and right now SMU is in the position of being well more than a "liberal arts private school" and being peers with others in that category, yet SMU is behind Duke, Vanderbilt, Emory, Rice and the like when it comes to research performance and if there was to be a collaboration with UTSW it would be more in the form of life sciences VS medical doctor training