Managing Endowment

Universities are not-for-profit and for public service and also subsidised so, like I say, you need various sources of funding to come in. Tuition fee, government funding is one. Of course, quite typically I think in most universities, maybe the US universities are pioneers in this, created something called the endowment which basically is a kind of capital that the university raises, but from private donors. And they are there for the university as a financial resource not to spend, but to invest and from there, generate income to support the university. So that's the whole concept of the endowment. And when SMU was started, the Government was the first party to contribute to the endowment. They gave us a seed grant, fifty million dollars, so that was the first cheque we got. And at that time to help us build that endowment, they also committed a three dollar-to-one match, which is very generous. So if a donor gives a dollar, they match three dollars and that's how we built up our endowment to what it is today. So it is also good in the sense that for the fact that you can't spend the money. The university has to first manage it. Secondly, be very disciplined about not spending it. So it also builds financial responsibility on the university part. You cannot spend that money away. You are supposed to invest it so you earn and you are also not supposed to, hopefully, lose it away to your investments, so that's the discipline that it puts on us. So with that we have this now another resource that we can use to generate funding for the university and it is a wonderful good for the university.