It’s official: Returns for college and university endowments for the 2017 fiscal year are in, and while they averaged a respectable 12.2 percent for the year, over the last decade they have underperformed funds offering a simple 60-40 or 70-30 stock-fixed income allocation. With their average returns dragged down by the weak performance of hedge funds, venture capital and private equity, you would think endowments would be fleeing these so-called alternative investments, which are costly and mostly illiquid, as some large pension funds have done. On the contrary, endowments are holding firm, or even adding to these holdings.