Letter to Congress outlines role of MIT endowment
Below is the text of a letter sent Friday by MIT President L. Rafael Reif to the chairmen of three congressional committees in response to a request of the 56 U.S. colleges and universities with endowments of more than $1 billion. (Read the full explanation of MIT's endowment here.) Dear Chairman Hatch, Chairman Brady and Chairman Roskam, On behalf of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), thank you for your letter on university endowments, dated February 8, 2016. We are grateful for the opportunity to participate in this discussion and pleased to clarify the role of our endowment. The following pages offer detailed answers to your questions about our endowment’s value, management and use. These financial facts only begin to express what our endowment is worth, however, because in a real sense, the value of our endowment is the value of everything the people of MIT accomplish. At MIT, our mission charges us to...