BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Studying the market trends, researching companies on the S&P 500, considering long-range performance – these are all practices of any investment analyst. The only difference in this case is that the analysts are students.
The Illinois Wesleyan University class in Portfolio Management challenges students to research and evaluate an investment portfolio. Unlike other college portfolio classes, the stocks these IWU students manage are real.
“Students learning to understand investing through classes is growing throughout universities across the country, but many of them have undergraduate students use phantom funds,” said Elisabeta Pana, assistant professor of finance at IWU. “Our students have made educated suggestions to an actual Client Board. This is not a hypothetical situation.”
The portfolio fund at Illinois Wesleyan is in the form of an endowment, donated in the early 1990s by Savannah, Ga. businessman C. Leroy Benner, who learned of IWU from his friend, 1949 alumnus Jack Liston. The two decided to provide more than $100,000 for a fund where students could learn the real impact of investing. Other donations followed, including a recent gift from the Benner estate. Students began analyzing the portfolio in 1995, and after 12 years of student management, the fund now tops more than $1 million.
“This is a great opportunity,” said senior business administration major Michael McQuillan. “I’m looking forward to going into job interviews and telling them I’ve already worked on a million-dollar account.”