The interesting college on that list is Berea.
@PrimeMeridian - I like your classifications, fuzzy though they may be. Of course what really counts is how much of the money available is actually spent on students. If your kid is looking to attend any of these awesome schools as a UG, you have to investigate what portion of the money is spent on undergrads (for all services: research ops, teaching, financial aid, etc). I’m a shameless fan of the LACs on the list for exactly this reason.
Figuring out the relative amounts that universities spend on student aid, as Much2learn pointed out about Penn, seems like a reasonable way to compare schools that have both graduate and undergrad populations.
@otterma "Figuring out the relative amounts that universities spend on student aid, as Much2learn pointed out about Penn, seems like a reasonable way to compare schools that have both graduate and undergrad populations.:
I didn’t have to figure out anything. I just googled the University of Pennsylvania 2015 financial statement where the amount spent on financial aid was disclosed for undergrad and grad students. It is really very easy to find.
??? @Hunt, Berea has a mandate to provide a tuition-free education to poor kids so is in a special class.
Richmond, Trinity U, (and maybe W&L) stand out as non-elites that are mega-rich or above.
Also, Wikipedia or @PrimeMeridian must be limiting some how because I’m pretty certain we should see Denison, Olin, and Cooper Union on there somewhere.
I didn’t exclude any schools from the Wikipedia list that I sourced & referenced-- I don’t do that sketchy crap. In fact, I took the trouble to research, calculate & add Northeastern to the list, since Northeastern had been discussed on this thread.
Franklin Olin is in the top ten. Oops, it is number 11 according to this source:
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/Rankings/Details/EndowmentPerStudent
And as everyone may have likely guessed, there is a high correlation between endowment size and amount of high-achieving alums (which I use to tier here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1-p1.html).
15 of the 20 schools that are “super mega rich” or above are Ivies/equivalents (Grinnell and ND are near-Ivies while Berea, Richmond, and W&L are not).
Of the 30 schools I have as Ivies/equivalents, only Georgetown isn’t at least “Merely Rich”
(Some Ivy-equivalent LACs don’t appear on this list but CMC is above "Mega Rich, Bryn Mawr is “Mega Rich”, Haverford, Oberlin, Reed, and Carleton are above “Merely Rich”, and Wesleyan is “Merely Rich”).
Holy Cross is not on the list.They have 721 million for 2872 students, making them “merely rich” I believe. @PrimeMeridian
^ Yeah, I think a lot of LACs are missed here.
This list (of the top 50 schools with the highest per capita endowment from a few years ago) contains more LACs: http://www.edpolicythoughts.com/2012/01/top-50-endowments-per-pupil.html?m=1
From post #45, the College Raptor endowment rank has Bates increasing its endowment/student by 288% from its last ranking (from $133,449 - $518,452) ???
Looking only at endowment per student is not a good way to measure a University’s wealth potential in the long run. An university can have a high endowment per student just because it has a smaller student body. So for example, if a University just cuts its undergraduate population in half, it could automatically raise its endowment per student and appear more wealthy overnight. The issue with this metric is that there is a certain viable number of students you need to sustain yourself in the long run. If you consistently have a small student body for decades through under enrollment or even take your eye of the ball on making sure that there is thriving critical mass of students, in forty or fifty years you may not be able to have adequate alum support to grow your endowment.
Both Total endowment and endowment per student are important to figure out how rich the university is and how well it is positioned to continue being rich in the future, since wealth of the university seems to directly correlate to ranking performance and even outcomes for its students.
@CollegeAngst, none of the colleges on that endowment list are in danger of under-enrollment.
@PurpleTitan My point is that you can go from being very wealthy and very comfortable to merely comfortable and slipping if you don’t watch your undergraduate enrollment numbers carefully. And the metric Endowment/per student, may actually hurt you in the long run, because you can seem to be more wealthy just because you have a small undergraduate body relative to your current endowment. There is a critical mass of students you need to sustain yourself and many of the LAC’s and even some universities with small undergraduate enrollments are not positioned to remain wealthy in 50 years.
It would be interesting to compare where these universities stood 50 years ago and where they stand today. If you have slipped in your endowment ranking and have not made changes, then you are headed for trouble.
@CollegeAngst, and I don’t know why I have to repeat myself, but these colleges simply do not have an under-enrollment issue. No college has ever dropped in the endowment rankings because of under-enrollment.
Grinnell is a “near Ivy” and Washington & Lee isn’t? In what world?
Not True. In the 1950’s Chicago had one of the largest endowments compared to most other colleges. Only Harvard and Yale had bigger endowments. Chicago was richer than Princeton and Stanford and other schools. Their Endowment/student was actually increasing, because they were on a downward trajectory for undergraduate enrollment after World war II. So as their undergraduate enrollment slid down, their Endowment/student increased.
But after 40+ years or poor enrollment in the Undergraduate college, Chicago’s standing in terms of endowment plummeted relative to its peers. In the late 1950’s their college enrollment was barely in the low 1,000’s when peer schools like Harvard had an undergraduate enrollment of close of 5,500. Stanford and Princeton increased their undergraduate enrollment 5x in a very short span of time compared to where they were before World War II. I think at its lowest, Chicago admitted only 370 first year students into its College one year.
Keep that up for 40 years and you can see the result. Chicago could not draw from a rapidly expanding alum base because they had ignored their college numbers for a long time, in their quest to be a premier “Graduate Research University”. By the 90’s many colleges that were behind Chicago in terms of endowment in the 50’s including Northwestern, Penn and Columbia had overtaken Chicago. The University has reversed that trend but they are still playing catch up. If Chicago had just kept its undergraduate enrollment numbers on par with Princeton and Stanford, they would probably have an endowment of around $20 Billion now. Chicago’s undergraduate enrollment only overtook Princeton in the late 2000’s
I am not saying this is happening at every LAC’s or university listed in #36. I am just saying that it can happen and it has happened and Endowment/Student is misleading as a leading metric on predicting future wealth of an University. As I said, it would be interesting to see the trend lines for the colleges listed in #36.
@CollegeAngst, OK, it can happen, but it isn’t happening now and won’t happen in the foreseeable future at the most selective colleges and universities.
@LucieTheLakie, mine, for one (also if you go by alumni accomplishments). Grinnell has always been known as a top LAC in the Midwest and I hadn’t even ever heard of W&L before joining CC.
@PurpleTitan, I’d never heard of Grinnell before buying the Fiske Guide, so I don’t think personal knowledge is relevant. Washington & Lee sits at 11 in the new US News rankings. They’re very different schools, but I’d classify both as “elite.” I don’t even know what “near Ivy” means when discussing LACs.
@LucieTheLakie, well, you did ask which world, so I answered. In any case, in my link above, I detail how I tier schools (by alumni accomplishments). I don’t care much for input-driven gameable rankings like USNews.