Could it be that those wealthier peer schools have more wealth than they actually need or can use effectively - at least at the undergraduate level? If Chicago is doing just fine by its own lights with the endowment it now has, that outcome speaks for itself. If with a yet greater endowment it could satisfy every conceivable student need - as the ivies are said to do - I would consider that a negative outcome for this school with its history and values. Excessive wealth concentrated in a few schools is part of the problem, not the solution.
@JBStillFlying - so the college can clearly improve and get better, but other peers can simply improve at a faster rate.
I equate backsliding with going backwards (in some ways, what’s happening w our medical plant), but i don’t see the college going backwards - it’s just not moving forward as fast as its peers.
I also don’t really slight Chicago for this. It’s super hard to keep up with wealthier, more entrenched peers.
I do wish our finances were better - that is one area where we seem to be backsliding (while peers are getting better).
From 1958 - 1993 UChicago’s endowment grew only 32% in real terms (ie over and above what it would have done anyway at some steady rate of return). In the same time period, its peers - defined by UChicago to be HYPS, Columbia, MIT, Penn, Cornell, and NU (no Duke for some reason though they’d probably include it now) - all experienced real endowment growth of about 157%. This analysis is in the Boyer book.
I updated that analysis using the 2018 data that Cue provided and a long term regular endowment return rate that reflects slightly lower inflation over the past 25 years. As a result, UChicago’s real growth was about 115% - a notable improvement! However, the peers grew 178% - faster than their old increase and in less time. So while UChicago has obviously picked up speed, the peers are outpacing it. Furthermore, it’s the ones with UChicago-sized endowment 25 years ago that have really done well: Penn (318% real growth); MIT (214% real growth), NU (182% real growth). Only Columbia and Cornell experienced less real growth than did UChicago. Those two schools are also smaller in endowment relative to UChicago when normalized for the actual size of the schools (measured by population).
If UChicago can get alumnae and similar giving to really kick in, it should be able to catch up to NU and Penn. But HYPS and even MIT are so far ahead of the game that I seriously doubt UChicago can ever be competitive on endowment alone. This is why they will need to continue to do more with less.
(Of course, one way to be doing more with less is avoiding that $500k/student threshold for the endowment tax. UChicago is just under. NU is just over, and by my estimates might be paying about $7 mill per year to Uncle Sam. And Harvard might be paying a cool $24 million!)
“Chicago is trying to do more with even less than 20 years ago.”
That’s factually untrue. Chicago has a bigger total endowment now, which means it is doing more with even more, even if you adjust for inflation.
@FStratford - I meant chicago is trying to do more with less now than its peers, compared to 20 years ago. The gap has widened.
@JBStillFlying - why do you think alumnae or other giving will really kick in, anytime soon? Chicago is about to close a major capital campaign. Traditionally, giving falls off for a few years after that.
Per what you imply, I agree that Chicago should not wait for a long period between major giving campaigns. One of Penn’s greatest successes was, just a few years after ending a major campaign (that raised around $4.5B), they started another campaign for another $4.5B.
I don’t know if Chicago has the fundraising capacity to do that.
An interesting point, Chicago used to have the #3 endowment in the country, behind only harvard and yale:
https://magazine.uchicago.edu/9904/html/curriculum.htm
So in the past 60 years, we’ve gone from #3 to #15. Harvard and Yale have stayed at the top. Why did our fundraising languish? Yes we had a very small college, but we were always a comprehensive research U. The endowments for all our other schools (save for maybe Booth) have fallen off the pace too - e.g. giving to the medical plant, grad schools, etc.
“why do you think alumnae or other giving will really kick in, anytime soon? Chicago is about to close a major capital campaign. Traditionally, giving falls off for a few years after that.”
- Didn't mean to predict that it would. A lot depends on how many connections they have made to benefactors who will then become regular (not just one-time) donors going forward. Guessing they are connecting to everyone not just alums (for instance, parents of the current and graduated College).
“Why did our fundraising languish? Yes we had a very small college, but we were always a comprehensive research U”
- Boyer's book explains some of it.
The good classes all have <30 class size. If you take Honors classes you won’t see many people. Typically the honors econ track (ECON 20010) starts with two sections, 80 people total, but by the end of the sequence there will only be 20~30 people left. It’s the easy classes that are filled with people. Most of the time you can easily swap out a requirement for a better class with better professors and smaller class sizes (so less crowding during office hours) and challenge yourself more.
Some really good classes with Nobel faculty/highly esteemed professors can sometimes only have a dozen people enrolled. So honestly it’s just an issue of people not seizing a good opportunity.
^ The autumn quarter which ends tomorrow has 108 / 100 enrolled for 20010 (honors). Two sections each with a capacity of 50. One of the sections is over-enrolled by 18 (so 68 total) and the other has 40 enrolled. Presumably, these are “final” numbers for the course (as in, that many might have taken the final).
Edit to add, also, Heckman’s Behavioral course has 39/20 enrolled. There you have a popular subject AND a Nobel laureate.
Econ is seeing higher and higher class sizes. It isn’t weird to see 7 people total taking Shimer’s class or only 11 people enrolled in Honors metrics just a few years ago. Lately even the notoriously hard classes have 20+ enrollment.