Because they might be the only university with any money left a couple years from now – from Bloomberg:
The University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment, took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion and is storing the bars in a New York vault, according to the fund’s board.
The fund, whose $19.9 billion in assets ranked it behind Harvard University’s endowment as of August, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, added about $500 million in gold investments to an existing stake last year, said Bruce Zimmerman, the endowment’s chief executive officer. The holdings are worth about $987 million, based on yesterday’s closing price of $1,486 an ounce for Comex futures…
That is a lot of scratch tied up in gold – and you’d only do that if you entertain great doubts about the future viability of the US dollar…and all other fiat currencies, as well.
As I keep telling everyone, don’t look at what people are saying at the moment. If you really want to know what is going on, look around for what people are doing. A lot of people are saying the economy is on the mend – but what a lot of people are doing is hedging against a financial melt down. You can ignore all this and keep up with a “BTFD” economic strategy, or you can read the writing on the wall.