Dartmouth Endowment – The Ivy League’s Switzerland of Finance

Related research: Elite U.S. Endowments: Government Funding and Liquidity Pressure • Multiple Shades of “Green”: UPenn’s Cash Flow Dilemma • MIT’s Risky Business

The recent New Yorker article, “How Dartmouth Became the Ivy League’s Switzerland,” argues that Dartmouth has not been singled out by Washington the way other Ivies have (at least so far) because its leadership has leaned into institutional neutrality and process-driven “dialogue.”

Specifically, in April 2025 President Sian Beilock did not sign a widely supported open letter defending higher ed from federal overreach (all other Ivy presidents did), arguing that Dartmouth should focus on action and self-reflection rather than “form letters.”

So, per the New Yorker, by avoiding collective statements and emphasizing neutrality, Dartmouth has escaped targeted federal sanctions that some peers faced – drawing praise from free-speech advocates and criticism from others who see the stance as naïve or tacitly accommodating.

That seems plausible. However, the real reasons for both Ms. Beilock’s independent stance and Dartmouth’s perceived immunity from U.S. government actions are the school’s rock-solid finances.

It’s the liquidity, stupid!

In our FY23 annual endowment report, A Private Equity Liquidity Squeeze by Any Other Name, we assessed the looming liquidity crunch facing elite endowments – nearly a year before any threats of government funding cuts were on the horizon.

What followed was a perfect storm: a drought after several years of record-low PE distributions (typically used to fund capital calls); cuts in donations from prominent alumni frustrated by universities’ lack of responses to antisemitic violence on campus; tariff-induced market volatility; and, on top of that, both real and perceived threats of losing billions in government funding. All of this prompted unprecedented debt issuance by cash-strapped schools, as well as sizable secondary sales of PE stakes by some (Harvard and Yale), while others explored these and additional options (beefing up lines of credit, large expense cuts, etc.).

Dartmouth, by contrast, didn’t even tap its line of credit^[1], raised no debt in FY24, and issued only $100 million of taxable commercial paper in FY25 – while other Ivies issued more than $8 billion in non-taxable and taxable bonds over the same two-year period. How is it possible that Dartmouth – despite a significant PE allocation ($3.2 billion as of FY24, or 36.6% of the portfolio, about the Ivy average of 36.8%) – was able to weather the storm?

The answer is straightforward: according to the MPI Transparency Lab, Dartmouth’s endowment is highly resilient and relatively insulated from government-funding risk compared with peers. The diagram below shows liquidity risk (Y-axis), measured by the ratio of unfunded PE commitments to MPI-estimated liquid assets, and government funding risk (X-axis), measured by the ratio of FY24 government grants to liquid assets.