<p>The financial resources rank is average spending per student which includes a ton of other stuff besides financial aid and scholarships. The more a school pays its janitors, administrators, portfolio managers, and everyone else, the higher it will rate on this ranking. The more federal resources in terms of work study and federal loans it cycles through the expenditure number, the higher it will rank in this metric. Obviously, the more endowment income there is to play with, the higher the ranking will end up being. And I will bet, even though I don’t know, that the portion spent on instruction is probably lower than all of us think. I also wonder what is included in the catch all bucket called institutional support.</p>