New Endowment figures out...

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Lots of impressive gains. There are now well over 20 universities in the US with endowments exceeding the $3 Billion mark!</p>

<h1>1 Harvard University: $34.9 Billion (21% growth)</h1>

<h1>2 Yale University: $22.5 Billion (25% growth)</h1>

<h1>3 Stanford University: $17.2 Billion (22% growth)</h1>

<h1>4 Princeton University: $15.8 Billion (21% growth)</h1>

<h1>5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology: $10 billion (19% growth)</h1>

<h1>6 Columbia University: $7.1 Billion (20% growth)</h1>

<h1>6 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor: $7.1 billion (26% growth)</h1>

<h1>8 University of Pennsylvania: $6.6 Billion (24% growth)</h1>

<h1>9 University of Notre Dame: $6.5 Billion (46% growth!!!)</h1>

<h1>10 University of Chicago: $6.1 Billion (25% growth)</h1>

<h1>11 Duke University: $5.9 Billion (10% growth)</h1>

<h1>11 Northwestern University: $5.9 Billion (11% growth)</h1>

<h1>13 Washington University-St Louis: $5.7 Billion (19% growth)</h1>

<h1>14 Cornell University: $5.1 Billion (18% growth)</h1>

<h1>15 Emory University: $5 Billion (3% growth...not good)</h1>

<h1>16 University of Virginia: $4.7 Billion (29% growth)</h1>

<h1>17 Rice University: $4.1 Billion (3% growth...not good)</h1>

<h1>18 Dartmouth College: $3.8 Billion (22% growth)</h1>

<h1>19 Vanderbilt University: $3.4 Billion (15% growth)</h1>

<h1>20 University of California-Berkeley: $3.3 Billion</h1>

<p>Other universities that have endowments over $3 billion are USC, UT-Austin and Texas A&M-College station.</p>

2

<p>I wouldn't say good or not good with growth %'s.</p>

<p>If it is 3% growth, without additional spending anywhere...then go ahead and say it's 'not good'. If they are just reinvesting a greater portion in the university, I'd argue that is quite good, at least for the students.</p>

<p>For instance, Rice is investing a ton in building a new residential college I believe.</p>

3

<p>DCS, at that level, I don't think investing infrastructure and growth of endowment are necessarily mutually exclusive. Michigan has spent over $250 million on new buildings and increase scholarship money by $400 million and still managed to have endowment growth average 20% annually. I agree that if a school's endowment is under $2 billion, large investments could impact endowment figures, but not when a school has an endowment of $4 billion.</p>

4

<p>Just for reference, the DJIA gained 19.6% in the year ended 6/30/2007. That doesn't include dividends gains of about 2.25%.</p>

5

<p>How would public funds from the state factor into the financial picture for the state unis and for Cornell's statutory colleges? Would public money provide a more complete picture?</p>

6

<p>Alexandre, did you compile these figures yourself? Or are they from a particular web site? I'm curious because I don't believe that all of these schools (e.g., Columbia) have officially announced their FY '07 results yet (unless I just missed it).</p>

7

<p>Those numbers I got from Wikipedia, which lists the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO as its primary source. They tend to be accurate. But as you point out, not all those stats are "official".</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._colleges_and_universities_by_endowment%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._colleges_and_universities_by_endowment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

8

<p>Cal needs to get its act together.</p>

<p>It's like a 50 year-old just realizing he needs to start saving for retirement.</p>

9

<p>what does being public have to do with return on investments?</p>

10

<p>Many states have restrictions on what types of investments can be made with state funds. Also when you are playing with public money you tend to be more careful.</p>

11

<p>DSC:</p>

<p>Usually, new building is financed by capital campaigns, which are not part of the endowment. So, building shouldn't affect the endowment much one way or the other. </p>

<p>Alexandre:</p>

<p>Thanks for finding numbers that breakout the UT and TAMU system endowments by institution.</p>

12

<p>I'm pretty impressed by a 46 percent increase in any investment portfolio. Anyone see any stories about how Notre Dame did it?</p>

13

<p>^ They got lucky with their call options on oil futures... :P</p>

14

<p>I may be incorrect, but I think much of Emory's endowment is in Coke stock, and that Rice's is dependent on the oil industry.</p>

15

<p>Growth includes funds added so maybe they got some big checks this year.</p>

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<p>Are you quite certain about these figures, Alexandre? According to Rice's student newspaper, the endowment is now at $4.66 billion. I don't mean to say you're incorrect, I just wonder at the large discrepancy.</p>

<p>Edit: Ah, Wikipedia. I'll have to look into this.</p>

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<p>An endowment is not a monolithic chunk. It is a collection of hundreds or thousands of bequests, many of which have strings attached.</p>

<p>On the usage side of endowments, some smoothing is done to eliminate boom bust cycles, such as a 3-yr moving average. The large gains of last year will not translate into endowment spending of that magnitude, although I suspect that politicians looking to bash endowments will make arguments comparing 1-year gains with 1-year spending.</p>

18

<p>Where did this data come from? I'm a Rice student and just a couple of weeks ago, our newspaper reported that we now had an endowment of $4.66 billion, which was the first gain of over 20% in I don't know how many years. I'm not saying your info is wrong, but there is a definite discrepancy there.</p>

<p>Edit:
Oops, I posted this before seeing Dorian_Mode's post. Oh well. Just verifying that we're on the same page though.</p>

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<p>Most of the general reports lag at least 6 months so some schools may have updated their info locally since then. It changes every day so there are always new numbers.</p>

20

<p>
[quote=]
Thanks for finding numbers that breakout the UT and TAMU system endowments by institution.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Unfortunately, it's still not really accurate. The quoted figures are their wholly-owned endowment funds, which do not necessarily encompass their share of the PUF (Permanent University Fund) endowments. The System funds aren't necessarily allocated in %s to various institutions, but provide overall funds that are dispersed to the various universities based on funding or other requirements. Therefore the 'true' effective endowment of each school is somewhere between their endowment #s and the System level endowments. (The system level endowments have always been tricky to decipher since until the 60s or 70s, UT and A&M essentially DID have the complete funds to themselves.) I wouldn't doubt the California schools (and other large state school system endowments) are similar.</p>