Welcome to the Billionaire club
- Thread starter srru86
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I wonder whether the merger with UMDNJ helped -- either in the sense that they had an endowment Rutgers took over, or in the sense that the merger encouraged more contributions to Rutgers. In any case, the merger was plainly a good idea, and Barchi is to be congratulated for implementing it.
The merger definitely added to the endowment but the university has also seen an increase in gifts earmarked for endowment funds.
Things are definitely improving at Rutgers and have been. I expect Barchi to continue to keep fundraising on a very strong path. I just hope people get over the "our fundraising stinks" attitude and instead recognizes the vast improvements over the years. It's true that we're making up ground for the past but people should feel good about fundraising at Rutgers.
Things are definitely improving at Rutgers and have been. I expect Barchi to continue to keep fundraising on a very strong path. I just hope people get over the "our fundraising stinks" attitude and instead recognizes the vast improvements over the years. It's true that we're making up ground for the past but people should feel good about fundraising at Rutgers.
Congratulations on achieving this milestone.
Getting a Medical and Dental School under the Rutgers banner is important for the long term future and the $200 million increase in endowment is an additional benefit. However it must also be measured against the additional debt load UMDNJ also brought to the University. I don't know if you know the amount.
HAIL TO PITT!!!!
At the end of the day RU got a fully functional medical school with multiple campuses and a decent endowment for a fraction of what that would cost to build from the ground up and instantly instead of over the course of decades. It was a great deal even if you include the debt load.
I do not think that Rutgers got any of the UMDNJ endowment contributed to the Rutgers Foundation. UMDNJ created a seperate entitty years ago and incorporated in Delaware at the time Governor McGreevey was attempting to reorganize Higher Education
Could be - the article says the $1 billion campaign netted us more than $300 million in new endowment money - which would get us in the range of $1 billion from where we were a few years ago (particularly if you include a few years of high investment growth.)
Correct. The endowment from UMDNJ (valued at approx $186MM at the time of the merger) are not part of the Rutgers University endowment. The UMDNJ endowment is managed separately by the the NJ Health Foundation (http://www.njhealthfoundation.org/ and https://www.foundationforhealthcareadvancement.org/).
Does anyone have any idea where the income from UMDNJ's endowment goes, now that there is no UMDNJ?
According to financial statements from the NJ Health Foundation, distributions from the former UMDNJ endowment are made to the legacy parts of UMDNJ at Rutgers, Rowan, or University Hospital, in accordance with the donors' intents. I would assume that since the bulk of UMDNJ has been incorporated into Rutgers, then Rutgers sees the bulk of those distributions.
Oh, so while it's not part of our endowment, it functions like our endowment except that is (properly) limited to the kinds of activities that UMDNJ did and except that some goes to Rowan for the osteopathic school. It's a real tribute to the fund-raising at Rutgers that the school was able to reach $1 billion without the UMDNJ endowment.
To the extent that Rutgers gets the benefit of the money, it functions like Rutgers' endowment. But Rutgers controls its own endowment. Rutgers gets to decide how the money is invested, and also the timing of when it is spent (and how it is spent for discretionary endowment funds). Rutgers doesn't have any control over the money held by NJ Health Foundation. The University is at the mercy of NJHF in how much it receives and how it is spent. I would guess that NJHF is not withholding money egregiously, otherwise they risk getting sued by Rutgers. But it is not the same as this being part of Rutgers' endowment.
Only to the extent that is specified in the bequest. A lot of money donated to endowments is done with some degree of discretion in how/when the money is spent.
Upstream's caveats are well-taken. I believe there are limits on the extent to which a foundation like this can accumulate income and not spend it on the purported purposes., and that the IRS would be *very* interested if those limits were violated. So money will come from the Foundation for the support of former UMDNJ units, although perhaps not as much as Rutgers would like.
Not the complete picture.
UMDNJ had about $600 million in debt at the time of the merger.
Rutgers assumed the majority of the UMDNJ debt (maybe 72% ?).
Because of the increased debt load, S&P (Sept 2015) lowered the rating on Rutgers from "AA-" to "A+".
HAIL TO PITT!!!!
I think I addressed this already. They are two separate things - the endowment lasts for all time (at least in theory) - the debt gets paid off in time.
Further - paying off the debt was presumably worked into the budget of UMDNJ - via tuition, grants, etc. Assuming RU kept that state money nad charged the same tuition, the debt situation shouldn't be a problem.
But even so - if there are some overruns (i.e. UMDNJ WASN'T going to be able to pay back the debt - which seems somewhat likely, or the state isnt giving as much to RU as it was to the same UMDNJ units or both) - those overruns plus the increased cost of borrowing are basically the purchase cost of a fully functional medical school conveniently located right on RUs campuses.
So basically - RU pays some modest amount a year extra for the medical school (but much less than building it from scratch) and also gets the returns from the UMDNJ endowment to offset some of the operating costs. Still a great deal for the school, especially in a state where pharma is such a big deal.
And still none of that takes away from the fact that RU has increased its endowment by something approaching 90% in the past decade.
The reason that the medical school in New Brunswick is "conveniently located right on RU's campus" is because the school was originally started by Rutgers, and then was stripped from Rutgers to form CMDNJ (later renamed to UMDNJ). So unless Rutgers was compensated for the loss of the Medical School back in 1970 during a state reorganization, it doesn't seem reasonable for Rutgers to bear a "purchase price" when a state reorganization returns that school back to Rutgers.
You are overrating what Rutgers left to NJ. My understanding is that Rutgers Medical school was a two year school - you didnt even come out with an MD - you had to transfer to other schools. Did they have more than one or two buildings at the time? Further - the bulk of CMDNJ in 1971 was, I think, from the old SHU Medical school. And of course there have been many facilities built post-1970 in NB and Piscataway that had nothing to do with RU.
So yes, I think its not unreasonable for RU to essentially have to pay for the medical school by taking on the debt that it used to build all of those facilities in the first place.
The school started as a 2-year program with plans to migrate to a full 4 year school by 1970. The first students admitted to the 4 year program were admitted to Rutgers, but the school had been moved to CMDNJ by the time they arrived on campus.
I don't know how many buildings the school had in 1970, but certainly fewer than now. But do you really think that had the school remained with Rutgers, rather than being moved to CMDNJ, that the donations and funding for growth would not have been there? So the reality is that Rutgers founded a Medical School in Central NJ, and footed the start-up costs to get the school fully functional. Once it was fully functional, the State pulled the school out of Rutgers and gave it to CMDNJ. The school grew along the same trajectory that one could expect had the school remained as part of Rutgers. Then the State gave the school back to Rutgers along with massive debt incurred through political mismanagement of UMDNJ.
So basically you are saying - because the state took away a nascent med school 45 years ago, Rutgers should ahve gotten everything that got rolled into that nascent med school for free? It would be great - but seriously - we got essentially two med school campuses, plus various out buildings, plus the full infrastructure and faculty and research base and the $150 million or more endowment for half a billion in debt. Thats a good deal even if we should never have been in that position in the first place.
If the State is took the med school away from Rutgers without compensation as part of a state higher education reorganization among state institutions, then it makes no sense to charge Rutgers when the next reorganization of state higher education institutions moves the med school back to Rutgers.
If the debt that Rutgers absorbed was debt incurred as part of the capital improvements at the Med Schools, then a case could be made that the debt moves to Rutgers with the capital improvements that moved to Rutgers. But the debt wasn't incurred that way. The debt was incurred through political mismanagement at University Hospital (which was not part of the assets moved to Rutgers).
Also Rutgers did not get the endowment from UMDNJ. The endowment is managed separately from Rutgers. Rutgers gets the benefit of UMDNJ endowment distributions, but only as far as those distributions are from donations which were restricted to UMDNJ programs and units that are now part of Rutgers. Distributions from the parts of the endowments that are unrestricted may go to Rutgers, but they could also go to Rowan, University Hospital, or other health endeavors unrelated to Rutgers, as determined by the fund managers.
I agree with *both* of you. I agree with Upstream that Rutgers ought not have to been made responsible for all of UMDNJ's debt, but only the portion attributable to assets acquired by Rutgers. (OTOH, when one company acquires another, then the acquiring company automatically assumes the debt, and that may have been the analogy that prevailed. And I agree with DerLeider that the debt, although harmful to Rutgers' credit standing, is worth paying for getting a medical school, something that would have been otherwise impossible.
I assume that RU was only responsible for the debt incurred for facilities that ultimately went to RU. Maybe you could have discounted it for the cost of facilities that RU paid for back in the late 1960s - but as far as I know - thats two buildings - in 1960s costs.
You are picking nits about the endowment. Rutgers gets the benefits of the endowment that pertain to parts now managed by RU.
I have no idea how the debt was accumulated - but its seems unlikely that none of it was for facilities and that all of it was from mismanaging the hospital.
Either way - did you really think the state was going to give Rutgers a couple of billion in assets for free? Welcome to the real world - we get a med school but have to pay a discounted price for it.
It is hard to say where the debt was incurred. UMDNJ's capital assets were highly leveraged to pay for operating costs. Only $50MM of UMDNJ's capital assets were debt free (and the value of the Rutgers buildings that went to CMDNJ in 1970 are likely worth much more than that $50MM today).
According to Rutgers financial statements, Rutgers received $615MM in capital assets from UMDNJ and assumed $496MM in noncurrent liabilities. But the increase in debt from UMDNJ also caused Rutgers' bond ratings to drop, increasing the cost to Rutgers to borrow in the future. And, the state also saddled Rutgers with about $76MM in merger costs.
At best, you can say it is a wash ... It cost Rutgers about $600MM to get Med School assets worth about $600MM. But they got an instant med school, while it would have taken a few years to build it on their own. (The downside, is the instant med school comes with a poorly managed entrenched bureaucracy and a mediocre research reputation.)
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