[Steuard]

To a first approximation, this is what one would expect of index funds, right? They're literally incapable of beating the broad market (they have some expenses, so they have to lag a little). One point that's not addressed by these statistics is whether any given university endowment consistently beats the market, or whether they all fluctuate around that average over the long term (say, 20+ years).

The underlying question is, why should universities employ big teams of investment experts to manage their investments? (Those salaries are, I suspect, not accounted for in these performance numbers: the source says they are "net of fees", but I assume that's only counting actual fees from the investment products themselves rather than the costs of in-house staff.) If you can get consistently average results with almost no investment strategy at all, what are all those salaries for?