Ackman In Grant’s Conference: To Buy, Sell, Or Hold Harvard Corp

Bill Ackman started off his presentation at Grant’s Annual Fall Conference by pointing out the rather flat Harvard’s college undergraduate enrollment figures in the last 20 years. In that time frame the enrollment moved from 6.6 thousand to 7.1 thousand undergraduates.

The size of the faculty stopped rising in 2011, while only a decade earlier, the faculty increased by about 0.5% annually. On the other hand, administration grew substantially, reaching almost 40% growth in the last two decades.

Annually the cost of enrolling to Harvard increased by 4%, effectively doubling since 2004 (from $152 thousand to $307 thousand). Endowment net assets also substantially grew from $23 billion in 2004 to $51 billion in 2023. From this data, it is fairly...