Campus Clips

Yale’s endowment produced a 5.7 percent return for the fiscal year that ended last June 30. That’s lower than peers Harvard (9.6 percent) and Stanford (8.4 percent), but higher than Princeton (3.9 percent). Chief investment officer Matt Mendelsohn ’07 said that Yale’s strategy sometimes results in lower annual returns. “We remain focused on achieving investment success over the long term, knowing that doing so is likely to bring stretches of short-term underperformance,” he said. The endowment’s value at the end of the fiscal year was $41.4 billion.

A report released in December by the School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab presented evidence that at least 314 children from Ukraine have been forcibly deported by the Russian government, and that the majority have been adopted into Russian families in contravention of international law. The 20-month investigation drew on Russian databases, satellite images, and a leaked document. Law School professor Oona Hathaway ’97JD, who authored the report’s legal analysis, said in a video accompanying the report that it “establishes a basis for potential crimes against humanity, war crimes, and perhaps even part of a broader case of genocide.”

Early-action applications to the Yale College Class of 2029 declined by 14 percent from the previous year. This application cycle is the first since Yale began requiring students to submit standardized test scores, after four years of making those tests optional in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of early applications was still significantly higher than 2019, the last year test scores were required.

Military veterans and service members represent more than 9 percent of the newest class of JD students at the Law School, up from just 1 percent in 2017. The school has made a concerted effort to recruit more veterans in recent years. It participates in the Yellow Ribbon Program, a national initiative in which schools offer financial aid to cover costs not included in the GI Bill.

Is 36 credits too much to ask? The Yale College Council adopted a proposal in November to reduce the number of course credits for graduation from 36 to 32, a number they say is more in line with Yale’s peers. The proposal posits that “by lowering the threshold of course requirements to graduate, students can dedicate themselves more fully to their classes, and in the end take more away from their college education.” Yale College dean Pericles Lewis says the university is not currently considering the proposal.