Do you have 54% in Alternative Investments?

This week's Review Section of Barron's quoting this study by Common Fund that said college endowment funds had an average of 54% of their assets allocated to alternative investments.   

Obviously, endowments have better access to a wide variety of alternative investments such as venture capital, private equity, commodities, etc than an individual investor.    However, my review of the press release describing this study shows over one third of these alternative investments are marketable alternative strategies such as absolute return, long/short, market neutral, etc.

Hmmm...........food for thought

•  if the smartest, leading edge investors at endowments are using these strategies aggressively

•  doesn't common sense indicate that an individual investor might want to consider understanding and deploying some of these strategies in their portfolios?