There is this statement as reported by the Maroon
And then there is this one
I didn’t know that the University had $12 B in investment assets?
Their 2016 Financial statement stated that they had $8B in investment assets?
That is quite a significant jump unless I am comparing apples and oranges?? Are they sand bagging their fund raising efforts and reporting small increases on their campaign website?
Everything about this university from admissions to fundraising is a mystery 
The $12 billion might include money raised during the current capital campaign. Rumor has it that campaign is proceeding well ahead of schedule, and the goal was about $4.5 billion. (Edit: it’s $5 billion)
More details here: http://campaign.uchicago.edu
Going from $8 billion a year ago to $12 billion now seems like a huge increase, but if you factor in $3.9 billion from the capital campaign as well as some gains by the University portfolio (with the Dow at historic levels), it looks plausible.
If the $8 billion already includes money from the capital campaign (which seems more logical from a bookkeeping perspective) then $12 billion would require a huge uptick in donations and investment returns.
The University has finally come clean on the “new dorm”
So looks like they do have some spare cash on hand 
Look for their Notes payable to increase from $4.5B (gulp)
Are they counting pledges as part of their assets? Can a university book pledges? Thought they could but I dont’ know GAAP accounting for non-profits.
Edit/Update: Guess pledges are like receivables. But wondering how they are booked and whether/how they are included in the $12 billion. If the additional $4 bil. is from the capital campaign then some of that’s non-cash (as of yet)
Pledges are counted as receivables (and subject to a reserve). But I can’t imagine how accounts receivable could possibly be described as “investment asset” being managed by some team. That would be awfully misleading.