<p>I guess many of you have read this news in yesterday's Daily. Michigan's endowment now stands at $7.1 billion, tied with Columbia for 6th place among US universities. Penn's endowment stands at #8 in the nation with $6.6 billion. </p>
<p>Just to get an idea of how massive Michigan's endowment is, the entire UC system (which has 210,000 students and over 12,000 professors) has a total endowment of $7.3 billion.</p>
<p>Now, will they do anything useful with it? The school is drowning in money. This. The Athletic Department about to spend $200 million on 'renovations.' (I know they have their own budget.) And they want students to travel to the capital to fight for $29.6 million, or else they are going to have to raise tuition in the middle of the year.</p>
<p>29.6/7100 = .4% of the endowment.</p>
<p>I feel like the school could do a lot more with all of the money it is sitting on...instead we had a decade-long focus and battle over diversity - that ended in the school losing, stadium renovations that are going to happen no matter how great the opposition, etc. The administration here sucks.</p>
<p>dsmo, altough Michigan is very wealthy on an absolute scale, in a relative scale, it has a ways to go. Michigan's endowment/student stands roughly at $175,000. When taking into account the fact that Michigan is publically subsidized, you are looking at an endowment equivalent to a private university with an endowment of roughly $300,000-$350,000/student. And if you take economies of scale into account, Michigan's endowment/student is probably equivalent to slighly more. </p>
<p>However, there are universities out there with endowments per student well over $500,000/student. Schools like Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Notre Dame, Rice, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. Even those schools find it hard to manage with the rizing costs of faculty, facility maintenance and construction etc... Let us remember folks, gone are the days where faculty will work for sub 6-figure salaries or where top students are willing to enroll into schools that do not have excellent facilities and dorms.</p>
<p>As a Berkeley guy...I'm jealous. I think UCs are losing ground in this funding race.</p>
<p>I don't understand why Cal is not doing well on the funding front. Michigan and UVa have done very well in recent years, but somehow, Cal is lagging. As it stands, UVa has an endowment of $215,000/student. Michigan's endowment stands at $180,000/student. Cal's stands at $100,000. Now that's not too bad considering the fact that Cal has no medical school. However, the UC system isn't doing well where growth of endowment is concerned.</p>
<p>^ Well, if you count the whole UC system, Cal has a medical school - UCSF. In fact, the UC system has 5 medical schools - UCSF, UCLA, UCSD, UCD, and UCI! With all the rich Californians in the state, they certainly aren't very generous. I believe colleges get the most money when they have sustained publicly announced fundraising campaigns...Cal's campaign hasn't had a consistent fundraising message.</p>
<p>Maybe UC needs to hire some better investment managers.</p>
<p>Yes, but UCSF has its own endowment. So Cal's endowment of $3.3 billion is purely dedicated to Cal. But I agree with you, Cal doesn't seem to be raising money nearly as well as Michigan and UVa, both of which are leading the nation in endowment growth.</p>