Universities are turning into real-estate hedge funds. Students paying the price

Universities have increasingly adopted hedge-fund and real-estate strategies, shifting their priorities from education toward profit-generating investments that the article says have made student affordability worse. In January, the University of California system made a $4 billion investment in the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, known as BREIT, committing to keep it for at least six years. The article traces this to Tom Steyer's 1988 deal with Yale's endowment manager David Swensen, which it says sparked a race among universities to grow endowments. It cites a Roosevelt Institute case study finding that interest-rate swaps cost 19 schools $2.7 billion.