I don’t know, but There are some contacts and name of one Raymond Bartlett on the UH Treasury page if you want to try contacting them. The 2Q24 statement should be posted about this time
next month.
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FIFY.
This is not the PUF. It remains separate.
Actually the new fund name is the TUF, Texas University Fund. NRUF is what got replaced.
Proposition 5, which was a legislatively referred ballot initiative, renames the National Research University Fund to the Texas University Fund . To fund it, Texas lawmakers will allocate $3 billion from the state’
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Ah!
Got it.
I’d be surprised if the 2Q24 financials include the TUF. 1Q24 included either up to Aug23 or Nov23 depending on the statement.
I’d need to look into how they’re going to manage the fund at the State level, but I doubt it would be touched by UH or it’s own outsourced endowment investment managers. The TUF should be part of a government expenditure for the budget it was voted and slated for, then transferred to a holding agency that can be professionally managed like the PUF that would initiate distributions on a regular basis.
I would think the first glimpse we’d get of this TUF on UH Treasury would be around October time. I hope I’m wrong, but the procedure to set this all up takes time. Especially for ~3.9B of funds to get access to, find the appropriate managers, come up with the investment strategy for all four systems, and then action it. In addition, we’re on state government employee time. It’s an exciting time, though!
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Unfortunately, I agree. It may never show up in the UH Treasury endowment balance sheets. State agency will setup and direct how the fund is invested. The revenue generated by the UH-TUF will then be distributed to UH after UH makes a request for funds for some proposed expenditure . State therefore has control of what programs will be funded.
.
See that would be strange, because UT and aTm both get to count their respective shares of PUF in their publicized endowments.
Why should UH and other TUF schools be different?
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I think all TUF schools will be able to count them. I’d bet on it!
The 2Q24 endowment statement has now posted. Up to $1,122,000,000 or an increase of about
$54 million. Mostly due to net realized gains and unrealized appreciation.
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3Q24 Financials just posted. Endowment down to 1.116 from 1.122 billion due to
massive 48 million distribution. Don’t readily recall what that’s targeted for. Anyone know ?
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They’re probably tied to each endowment fund’s purpose unless there’s a chunk that was termed out and moved into a general fund for open use.
Here’s the var - most of it appears came out of mutual funds, but the inflows can hide the outflows:
I did happen to sleuth into the Texas University Fund stuff:
- HB1595 as reported (upon its approval about the TUF).
- It’s under control by the Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Company
- The reports are lagging, but it doesn’t appear to be funded outside the $900M “National Research University Fund” in other endowments.
- I did find the TUF Investment Policy handbook, published Jan 2024.
- Texas Higher Education Coordination Board is preparing the funding allocations, but “The fiscal implications of the bill cannot be determined at this time because the timing and amounts of any appropriations from the TUF are unknown”
- Per the THECB, they started preparing the funding through the Academic Institutions 2024-2025 Biennium analysis [EXCEL]
Gist of the funding report:
UH gets the highest distribution: $96.8MM for a two year period of '24 & '25, but this is only an estimate until the Texas LBB (legislative budget board) informational files the '24-25 budget.
- LBB takeaways: NREF is dead (page 333) and starting (334):
Of which we already knew…
Did I just go down a rabbit hole for 2 hours? I think so…
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Also forgot to mention that UH has additional funds outside the general and University of Houston foundation - found this doc disclosure which shows
The endowments are:
- UHS: ~1,116M
- Optometry Endowment: $6M*
- HAA: $10M*
- HAF: $4M*
- UH COB: $76M*
- UH Foundation: $168M
- Law School: $18M*
- Houston Cougar Foundation: $3.6M*
- TUF (eventually… needs 13 or so years to fund): $1,300M
Roughly: $2,702 B for UH system; however… assuming TUF in 13 years and growth of the other funds of 8% growth (may not be realistic, 4 or 5% might be the one) for 13 years:
UHS should be: $2,810M
Ancillary funds should be: $778M
TUF will be: $2,321M (8% growth on $100M additions, per year)
In 2036: UHS endowment will be: $5,909M while the following schools, held static (no new endowments - quite unrealistic) at 8% growth for 13 years:
- UTS: $122,293M [While they had 10% YOY growth, for 2014-2023]
- TAMUS: 52,447M
- Rice: 20,941M
- TCU: 7,013M
- TTU: 6,988M
- SMU: 5,550M
- Baylor: 5,347M
Rich keep getting richer.
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Only one on this list that upsets me is TTU. How in the heck did they jump ahead of us? Did someone gift them stock? Did they find some oil/gas?
We’re sharing that new endowment with them.
We do get 1 billion alone to just UH. The entire amount is over 3 billion total. Us and tech get about 1 billion each then the rest split some.
It doesn’t help when the athletics department with the smallest budget of any Power 4 school needs a $10 million loan from endowment funds. It might be a quasi-endowment, but that’s still funding that could have went to scholarships or programs that advance UH academic goals.
Hopefully the $4.1 million the athletics department receives from students fees will help it to pay it off the loan faster than the planned 11-year term.
This type of student fee doesn’t exist at UT, TAMU, or TTU, but at least it’s down from $8.59 million in fiscal year 2023. For comparison, student fees accounted for $5.15 million in revenue for all Big 12 schools in fiscal year 2023.
I don’t like to see these endowment funds used in this way either, but hopefully it’s a one time deal while we get up to speed with full Big 12 revenue shares. We are late to the party. But I do have concerns our future full share revenue will be eaten up in the new era of paying $20 million/yr in player salaries.
TTU used to get student service fee and university dollars, at least in the 2015/16 time frame per Tribune article.
Total athletic department revenue and expenses
Here’s a look at the amount of money the athletic department earns and spends by itself. Revenue doesn’t include student fees or money transferred into the department by the university. The TTU athletics department receives $3,282,974 from student fees and $2,531,257 from the university.
Loss: $1,416,487
Unfortunately, it’s common practice at UH to transfer academic funding to the athletics department. From fiscal year 2008 to 2023, UH transferred over $380 million from its academic side (based on reporting from the Texas Tribune and the NCAA financial reports for subsequent years). While that wasn’t reported as endowment funds, it isn’t hard to imagine what an additional $300 million could do for our academic goals.
Based on the NCAA financial reports, TTU discontinued the student fee after fiscal year 2019. Student fees accounted for 4% of their revenue that year compared to 12% of ours, and TTU’s academic transfers are roughly a tenth of ours with most of their transfers occurring from 2021 to 2023.
Athletics provide an opportunity to showcase UH, but this type of spending might be short-sided.
Yep big numbers, but the hope has always been to get to the P4/5 with the much higher revenue. And we were severely lacking in facilities 10+ years ago; much had to be built. Hopefully we can get to where TTU is now - Slight surplus in athletics.
And my understanding is most P4 schools
still subsidize ; few are like UT. Athletics is
price you pay for getting media attention for the school. It’s your advertisement budget.