At NCCU, a 21 percent loss isn't so bad

One sure sign that economy stinks: N.C. Central University’s finance officials see a silver lining in a 21 percent hit to the institution’s endowment.

NCCU’s three endowments - two that invest money for professorships and a third that manage scholarship funds - collectively took a 21.36 percent nosedive in 2008, a loss in real numbers of more than $4 million.

“That compares to a market that’s down about 50 percent from a year ago,” commented Alan Robertson, NCCU’s vice chancellor for administration and finance. “I know it’s pretty sad, but they are outperforming the market.”

Robertson’s comments came during committee meetings of NCCU’s Board of Trustees and were indicative of the conversations finance staffers are having at universities across the country. State funding is in peril, endowment values are sinking fast, and private donations are slowing.

Though NCCU’s endowment has lost significant value in the last year, the university nonetheless is in the somewhat unusual position of having positions to fill. Four big ones, in fact. Of NCCU’s 12 endowed professorships, four are currently vacant, a fact Chancellor Charlie Nelms acknowledged Tuesday through gritted teeth. Endowed chairs are positions bolstered by private donations and are customarily used to attract big-name scholars to a campus.

“A lot of these positions have been vacant for quite some time,” Nelms told trustees Tuesday. “That’s inappropriate and we are going to have these filled.”

Nelms said all four positions - two in English, one in social and behavioral sciences and one in mass communication - will be filled by Fall.

And while Nelms is enthusiastic about the prospect of using the endowed chairs as recruiting tools to get some impressive scholars through the doors, he also acknowledged that the money donated for this cause won’t go as far as it may have a year or two ago.

Each year, NCCU uses about 5 percent of the endowment to bolster the salaries of professors who hold the endowed chairs. But as the endowment’s value declines, the amount of money the university can use each year drops as well, and the university has to make up the rest of that salary cost in other ways.

Nelms believes NCCU ought to have quite a lot more than the dozen endowed professorships it has now.

“This place is poor; this is an institution with a very small endowment,” he said during a break Tuesday between committee meetings. “But a place this size, this alumni base, should have 50 or 60 endowed professorships.”