The decision by the University of California at Los Angeles to launch a venture capital fund to attract money from Silicon Valley donors is part of a growing trend among colleges and universities, the Los Angeles Times reports.
People think it is a wild, speculative venture.
But here, it's considered a legitimate way to make money grow. Other schools that have adopted the venture capital approach include Occidental College, UC Berkeley, and Williams College, which invested a quarter of its portfolio in venture concerns last year and saw those investments grow by 27 percent. We're hoping that at least 90 percent of the companies are survivors and half of them produce pretty decent returns. If you hit on a huge one, you get 100 times your money back in one year. According to college fundraisers, the new funds are a way to attract a different kind of donor.