<p>I am planning on applying to Fordham this fall. I've read that Fordham's endowment is around $450-500 million range and was wondering whether this was quite low for a college? How important is a college's endowment? And what effects does it cause on its students? Does a low college endowment imply that the school's alumni are not devoted to giving back to their
alma mater?</p>
<p>A school’s endowment can help a school offer more aid, pay for more research and serves as collateral for loans in order to build up/expand the school, but there are large schools that have small endowments and there are small schools with huge endowments, so the endowment is not a reflection of a school’s health or quality of education. Many huge state schools have less than $400 million but have expendetures of almost a billion/year do well with State help. Even Yale, with it’s billions in endowment, had to stop construction on some buildings as their huge endowment lost value as have many other schools.</p>
<p>I would agree the Fordham endowment is a little on the smallish side (it lost a great deal in the 90’s with the investment banking breakdown), they are able to do much with what they have. Almuni giving is good but could be better (alumni giving is a factor for rating in USN&WR). BUT they are in the middle of a $500 million dollar campain and have rasied much of that already from alumni </p>
<p>Here is what is important: There are many schools ranked below Fordham that have huge endowments, so don’t give it too much importance as quality of a school is not directly porportional to it’s endowment.</p>
<p>A great question; a somewhat drawn-out answer to the effect of “don’t worry about it.”</p>
<p>Here’s a previous thread comparing Fordham’s endowment compared to similar schools:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/fordham-university/1287903-fordham-endowment-sees-23-3-increase-past-year-fiscal-year-ending-june-30-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/fordham-university/1287903-fordham-endowment-sees-23-3-increase-past-year-fiscal-year-ending-june-30-a.html</a>
On this list, we’re about even with Villanova on a per-student basis. NYU has roughly twice as much per student, and Columbia about nine times as much. But our endowment, which has grown since the release of these data, is midsized among prominent Catholic schools.</p>
<p>Main effects (for undergraduates) of a smaller endowment:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The university can’t meet the full financial need of admitted students. It takes a large endowment to do this; NYU can’t, while Columbia can. If you get a merit scholarship, this becomes a non-issue.</p></li>
<li><p>Science facilities are a little older. Harvard, for example, will soon resume construction on its $1 billion+ science complex. Science construction on that scale doesn’t happen here, although other buildings are always adequate and frequently beautiful (in the last 15 years we’ve added O’Hare, Campbell, Salice, Conley, and McMahon [dorms], built Walsh Library, renovated many other buildings, and started a major construction project at LC). Moreover, in the humanities and social sciences, where the facility matters less than the faculty, Fordham is extremely well-equipped.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Possible causes of our smaller endowment:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Until the 1980’s, Fordham was primarily a commuter school. If I were a commuter, I’d have less school spirit and might donate less as an alumnus. I think your hunch about alumni giving hits the main reason our endowment isn’t larger, but I also think that this is because the nature of the school was different in the 1970s and 1980s, when many of today’s would-be donors attended. As Ramray notes, these alumni have really stepped it up for McShane’s recent fundraising drive.</p></li>
<li><p>Fordham isn’t famous enough to get random large donations. Consider David Geffen’s $200 million gift to UCLA, a school he didn’t even attend. The largest single donation to Fordham is Mario Gabelli’s $25 million, and Gabelli attended for eight years including his time at the prep.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Right now Fordham’s endowment stands at around $511 million dollars. BUT that does not include any money from Fordham’s $500 million dollar campaign which has already raised $460 million. So if you add that money to the endowment Fordham in fact has quite a bit of money, though they are spending large amounts of money on construction right now. Fordham completed the new Campbell and Salice-Conley residence halls for $105 million dollars, just spent nearly $50 million on the new business school and are going to spend $250 million at Lincoln Center. Plus there are more projects in the pipeline. The money for these projects are not spent from the endowment, and counts only for 35% of the money being raised. So Fordham is becoming wealthier as a school, and the higher the endowment the bigger the returns which will make the endowment even larger in the coming years hopefully augmented by heightened alumni giving.</p>