<p>The average endowment increase for the 20 largest endowments last year is about 16%. The average net investment return is surely larger than that.</p>
<p>Also, WashU lacks power in fundraising. Last year, WashU raised 130m, while most of its peers raised over 250m. The gap is equivalent to a 2.5-3 billion endowment.</p>
<p>lucifer - You really need to look at fundraising per alum, versus fundraising overall. While WashU may raise less than so called "peer institutions", WashU has fewer students than said Universities. Every decade or two they have a massive fundraising campaign that turns out to be very helpful - I believe that they raised well over $1 Billion with their last major fundraising campaign.</p>
<p>If you exclude extremely large universities from the fundraising list (i.e. U of TX, UMich), WashU comes in 8th for top endownment as of 2005. When adjusted for a per-student measure (out of the top 10 non-state university endowments), WashU is even higher.</p>
<p>I was told that Wash U is in excellent financial shape. It's bonds have very high ratings unlike many other schools.</p>