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The purpose of this paper is to understand the differences present in student-managed investment funds (SMIF).

The paper uses primary data collected by survey and interviews.

The findings of this paper suggest that research efforts need to be focused on the topical area and transparency in the field needs to be improved.

Past research is validated and future research is needed.

The need to develop and disseminate best practices in the management of SMIF’s.

Student-managed funds are widespread and growing but operate as independent entities.

The paper is original and based on primary research.

The “experience is the best teacher” model assumes that acquiring expertise in a given domain reduces biases. Research in expert knowledge in investment decisions has shown better ability to produce improved results in asset selection or portfolio returns. Universities created student-managed investment funds (SMIFs) to train students in portfolio management as fiduciaries. However, analyses of the effectiveness of the SMIF as a medium for expert knowledge transfer have not been done.

The authors’ analyze an SMIF's structure against established models of expert knowledge transfer, using the voting patterns of the trustees of the fund from the recorded minutes of the fund's meetings to show the fund's structure and outcomes demonstrate effective knowledge transfer. Voter consensus between faculty and student trustees is one proxy the authors use for knowledge transfer.

Consensus between faculty and students was uniformly high across all recommendations. Chi-square tests were employed to test for independence between approval of recommendation and level of consensus, showing dependence in most cases. Analysis of sale returns over the 12-year sample period showed significantly better performance of asset sales over relevant benchmarks for both equity and fixed income portfolios.

Most analyses of SMIF structure concentrate on well-known issues with things like student turnover, summers or other structural issues. Performance is evaluated based on returns. This study looks at the SMIF as an expert knowledge transfer medium and examines expert/novice decision approval in terms of knowledge transfer.

Many undergraduates major in business in hopes of being well-prepared for a career. However, Arum and Roksa (2010) find business students perform poorly relative to peers on measures of academic gains and employers report that few college graduates are well-prepared for business careers (Lumina Foundation, 2013). Experiential courses have the potential to engage students deeply and encourage critical thinking while developing important business skills. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper proposes several attributes of successful experiential courses and uses a student-managed portfolio as an example of a successful model.

Student-managed portfolios can improve educational and career outcomes for students.

Student-managed investment funds can provide a vehicle for teaching students research, critical thinking and writing skills while encouraging them to integrate knowledge from a broad range of business disciplines to understand a firm’s business model.

While experiential programs are touted as addressing these shortcomings, many academics remain skeptical of experiential programs which too often focus on showy trips, passively listening to important people or performing shallow analyses at the expense of developing a deep understanding of how to identify and solve complex problems. This paper offers some insight into important features of a successful experiential program.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it endeavors to document the current state of environmental, social and governance (ESG) pedagogy within undergraduate finance courses of business schools, and second, it seeks to show how business schools can leverage student managed investment funds (SMIFs) to swiftly integrate ESG pedagogy.

The study is comprised of two sections that use different methodologies. The first part of the study involves a manual content analysis of undergraduate finance course textbooks, and related instructor materials are used to estimate the average coverage of ESG-related topics. Next, a case study of a SMIF that has recently integrated an ESG framework is provided to illustrate how this pedagogical innovation is effective in teaching ESG skills.

The findings of the content analysis of the three most commonly used textbooks in a sample of 17 Canadian universities, as well as associated instructor material, provide evidence that the primary emphasis in traditional curriculum remains on the shareholder, with little attention paid to ESG factors. The case study of an existing SMIF clearly demonstrates how a student-led development of an ESG framework provides the setting for effective, experiential learning.

This study shows that while traditional teaching settings, like lectures, may be slow to adapt to the rapidly changing needs of industry, nontraditional teaching venues, such as SMIFs, can be leveraged to meet industry demand for ESG skills, thereby closing the skills gap, enhancing student employability and increasing the relevance of business school education.

The creation and formation of a student managed investment fund (SMIF) is a risky proposition for all stakeholders involved in the process. These risks include reputational risks for the individuals involved, fiduciary risks for the school’s Board of Trustees and monetary risks for the university itself. The purpose of this paper is to explain and detail how these risks can be mitigated through specific oversight committee (OC) construction, distributional/benchmarking requirements for the fund and detailed trading rules (exit points, short sale constraints, loss provisions, etc.) for fund managers, which can all be codified in the bylaws of the SMIF.

This investigation is done through a specific case study – the 2017/2018 formation of the George Mason University SMIF. As head of the OC for the fund and lead architect in the creation of the fund for the GMU faculty, the statements below come from firsthand accounts of dealing with all parties of interest and firsthand knowledge of the year-long process of managing all risks, which culminated in being granted endowment capital from the Board of Trustees to officially begin the SMIF on May 1, 2018.

First, this paper details how a complete investment policy statement can be used to mitigate the fears and concerns of all parties that have a fiduciary duty to the university’s endowment (which the students will now be partially managing). These bylaws include statements on the risk characteristics of the fund, distributions back to the endowment, oversight features and benchmarking. Next, written into the bylaws of the fund can be several benchmarking and distributional requirements to mitigate the risk exposure of the SMIF’s holdings. Finally, aside from benchmarking constraints, another successful risk management technique can be rules written directly into the investment policy statement that define exit points, tracking error, short sale constraints and other rules for trading.

This paper offers a roadmap by which these risks can be mitigated through the content of an investment policy statement/bylaws. The author details several techniques that eventually led to all stakeholders at GMU in signing off on the formation of an SMIF, and endowment capital being given to the fund as a seed investment. This is a firsthand account of this process and the author has not seen it documented in the literature anywhere else.

Schools must not necessarily have a large amount of money or advanced finance curriculum for students to get the benefits of participating in a student-managed investment program. Any college or university with motivated students and faculty can have a successful program if they are willing to put forth the effort. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors use a case study approach to examine specific characteristics of a successful student investment group implementation at a small liberal arts university in the Northwest USA.

Three student investment group implementation considerations are highlighted in this analysis: establishing an inclusive, interdisciplinary focus in a long-term club vs course format; utilizing all student-led training, governance and investment methodologies; and designing group processes with an emphasis on critical thinking and community outreach.

This case offers encouraging insights for how even a smaller college or university might successfully create and sustain a thriving successful student-led investment group with a relatively limited amount of funding and resources by leveraging liberal arts foundations.

An emphasis on how student-managed investment groups are tied to broader liberal arts foundations potentially helps schools of all sizes understand certain unique underlying value aspects for the students, the business programs and the broader university community.

The purpose of this paper is to look at how the faculty at West Point uses a student-managed investment fund (SMIF) to contribute to the development of Army officers.

The United States Military Academy at West Point started a student-managed investment fund in 1983. The Economics program, which has four finance classes within its curriculum, hosts the student-run SMIF. The students (cadets) in charge of the SMIF have recently started pursuing a risk parity strategy. This paper discusses the challenges that arise from taking on this strategy.

It argues that investment management, especially with a risk-aware strategy, helps the cadets learn to manage the risk/reward tradeoff as well as help them work on leadership skills, both of which will help them as future Army officers.

The authors suggest that the recent student-initiated changes to the SMIF at West Point highlight some of the leadership opportunities inherent to approaching a SMIF from a risk-aware, portfolio-based perspective. This can teach students important experiential lessons about how to manage prudent risk both in finance and as a leader.

For undergraduate-only, AACSB-accredited business programs, establishing a student managed investment fund (SMIF) can be an enormous, but potentially worthwhile, undertaking. Resources are often very limited – especially for faculty where their time is already consumed by teaching, administrative and publishing requirements. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the five-year experience at Stonehill College and suggest considerations for undergraduate institutions seeking to establish such programs.

This is a retrospective on the experience of designing and implementing a SMIF-based academic program. Student education and professional skill development should be the primary outcomes evaluated with such programs. Included are brief perspectives on the program from its alumni with commentary on perceived value in one to four years following graduation.

The experience to date suggests that establishing a SMIF at a smaller, undergraduate-only institution is challenging. For a SMIF to generate educational returns commensurate with its cost, it needs to be part of a comprehensive, academic-driven program that garners broad support by the business faculty and administration of the college. Personal reflections by its program alumni suggest that it can be a very meaningful academic and experiential learning opportunity.

This paper is focused largely on the experience of one institution. Further insights may be attained by a broader, unbiased analysis of institutions where SMIF programs have succeeded or failed to meet similar objectives.

The authors suggests that the creation of a SMIF program at smaller, undergraduate-only institutions faces unique challenges relative to larger, more well-endowed universities. These challenges can be overcome but not without a broad internal commitment. These programs, if done in a comprehensive way, can significantly impact student outcomes.

The retrospective offers up-to-date insights on the value and challenges of starting a SMIF program at smaller-sized, undergraduate-only academic institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed framework of goals, processes and solutions that can serve as a starting point for instructors in designing their own student-managed investment fund (SMIF) course experience that is relevant for all undergraduate business majors.

The design is suitable for a wide audience without prior equity investment expertise, lead to equity portfolio management competency and concentrate heavily on the understanding of the elements of a competitive business model. One noteworthy aspect of the proposed pedagogy is that it does not require a text, uses only real-world resources and is flexible in its execution.

The proposed pedagogy has achieved long-term success by consistently exceeding performance expectations.

According to the extant literature, many SMIFs are restricted to only a few students, develop skills unevenly across class participants, or are not formally organized or executed. There is a lack of in-depth and specific resources available in the extant literature to assist course designers in an SMIF design and execution. This manuscript fills this void by providing a detailed framework of goals, processes and solutions that can serve as a starting point for instructors in designing their own SMIF course experience.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the domain of experiential learning by sharing the experiences of establishing and developing student managed investment fund (SMIF) at West Virginia University (WVU).

This paper discusses the structure and performance of the SMIF at WVU within the context of experiential learning literature in financial education.

The adopted structure and coordination of SMIF appears to be effective in bridging the gap between classroom and the professional world, while significantly enhancing student experiential learning opportunities, engagement and professional preparedness.

The paper presents experience of launching and operating a SMIF at WVU, which has recently joined the ranks of R1 research universities. While the importance of research productivity has been on the rise, the significance of strengthening student experiences has also been growing and maintaining the balanced approach can be challenging. Enrollment in WVUs undergraduate finance program grew 33 percent over the past three years. With growing enrollment and competitiveness of finance degree programs, experiential learning opportunities like WVU’s SMIF are an essential for an evolving curriculum.