Harvard Loses $2 Billion From Daily Operating Account

Harvard University lost almost $2 billion from a cash account it uses to pay for daily operations, after investing the money with its endowment, which fell by 27 percent in the last fiscal year.

Universities typically invest the money they use to pay daily expenses in safer accounts, such as money market accounts.

However, Harvard invested some of this cash account with its endowment because it was a strategy that had been profitable in past years. 

In a Q and A published by Harvard, the university’s treasurer Jim Rothenberg described the losses as “a function of last year’s extraordinary market conditions.”

A Harvard spokesman says the University has begun reinvesting money from its cash account in typically-safer funds.