Stanford did not pioneer investments in alternative assets classes (VC&#x2F;PE etc...) Robert Swenson of the Yale endowment fund was much earlier than that. It also became known as the &quot;Yale Model&quot;<p>===<p><i>For the two decades after Swensen took over as manager of Yale’s endowment in 1985 (just five years after he’d gotten his economics Ph.D at Yale), this worked spectacularly well — with a 16.1% annualized return compared with 12.3% for the S&amp;P 500 and a remarkable record of sailing through stock market downturns that pummeled most other institutional investors.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2010&#x2F;04&#x2F;why-the-yale-model-of-investin&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2010&#x2F;04&#x2F;why-the-yale-model-of-investin&#x2F;</a>
</i><p>===<p><i>The prevalence of Swensen acolytes in leadership posts highlights how dominant the Yale investment model has become among major U.S. universities. Colleges and universities ended 2014 with 51% of their portfolios invested in less-traditional fare like hedge funds, private equity and real estate that Yale favors—nearly double the allocation to those investments in 2001, according to annual surveys done by Nacubo and Commonfund.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;universities-look-to-yale-for-investment-managers-1430299801" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;universities-look-to-yale-for-in...</a>
</i><p>===<p><i>Swensen’s idea, implemented at Yale and copied nationwide, was that universities should shift their endowment money out of traditional investments such as stocks and bonds and into higher-yielding ones like private equity, hedge funds, and real estate. The Yale model, as it came to be known, perennially outperformed stodgier strategies, gaining Swensen gurulike adulation.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;upstart.bizjournals.com&#x2F;executives&#x2F;2009&#x2F;03&#x2F;18&#x2F;David-Swensen-and-the-Yale-Model.html?page=all" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;upstart.bizjournals.com&#x2F;executives&#x2F;2009&#x2F;03&#x2F;18&#x2F;David-S...</a>
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