<p>Endowment is a huge part of a school's funding correct? I was checking the endowments of universities on Wikipedia and was surprised to see how much they differed. Does the fact that endowments differ by a quarter billion dollars or more among schools of the same size make a large impact on the school?</p>
<p>I had never really thought of it before</p>
<p>for example it seems like southern schools like alabama have low endowments</p>
<p>private schools usually have high endowments…usually close to a billion. </p>
<p>i mean 588mill isnt bad…</p>
<p>I would like to know more about endowments too…</p>
<p>A university with a large endowment can draw more income from investments. A low endowment is not bad per se - maybe the university has a higher income from other sources. </p>
<p>The operating budget is not a good indicator for the quality of the education you will receive, because it does not tell you where the money goes. A big athletic budget does not help you if you are not interested in sports. A big research budget might make the university more prestigious among academics but won’t help you find a job. If a big junk of money gets eaten up by a very inefficient administration, you might have to put up with excess bureaucracy.</p>
<p>I suggest you focus on indicators that will be more meaningful to you as a student: class sizes, funding for student research or study abroad, the availability of your favorite extracurricular activity, quality of on-campus housing, food and residential life services, etc.</p>
<p>As barlum said, you have no idea where the endowment is going–research universities could be obtaining large gifts because of their research, but the interest gained from these endowments is used to fund more research. It’s a big cycle, but one that is largely irrelevant to undergrads.</p>
<p>You also can’t compare endowments of public and private colleges. Privates rely heavily on endowments while public colleges have heavy outside funding from the state.</p>
<p>Endowment per student is a pretty interesting measure for LAC’s with an undergrad focus, however.</p>
<p>I’m currently towards the end of my undergrad and looking at large public institutions for doctorate study in computer engineering</p>
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<p>While I’m not sure how good of a measure between schools endowment per student is, it is certainly a very…interesting experience attending an extremely wealthy school with a very high endowment per student. I think Pomona is actually number one among LACs in this category?</p>
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<p>Even less reason to care about endowments. As a graduate student you will only interact with a very small subset of the university. As long as your research group is doing well, why care what the rest of the university is up to?</p>
<p>just looking at private schools, you will see that there is a trend towards the better schools having a higher endowment per student, in general.</p>
<p>by the way, here is the most recent list of total endowments for each school:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/research/2009_NCSE_Public_Tables_Endowment_Market_Values.pdf[/url]”>Page not Found;
<p>Endowment per Student on 6/30/09 School</p>
<p>1 $1,682,581 , Princeton
2 $1,426,437 , Yale
3 $1,334,480 , Harvard
4 $870,680 , Pomona
5 $769,560 , Amherst
6 $757,500 , Swarthmore
7 $707,121 , Stanford
8 $689,025 , Williams
9 $662,185 , Rice
10 $657,591 , Caltech
11 $641,389 , Grinnell
12 $540,289 , Wellesley
13 $483,053 , Dartmouth
14 $417,296 , Notre Dame
15 $416,307 , W&L
16 $411,383 , U Richmond
17 $411,278 , U Chicago
18 $399,526 , Bowdoin
19 $353,538 , Smith
20 $339,352 , Emory
21 $329,795 , Claremont McK
22 $315,842 , Duke
23 $305,934 , Wash U
24 $299,070 , Bryn Mawr
25 $295,440 , Northwestern
26 $287,499 , Haverford
27 $287,333 , Macalester
28 $285,004 , Middlebury
29 $275,529 , Vassar
30 $271,876 , U Penn
31 $262,747 , Harvey Mudd
32 $261,120 , Hamilton
33 $258,655 , Carleton
34 $254,044 , Columbia
35 $245,257 , Colby
36 $243,339 , U TEXAS
37 $242,487 , Brown
38 $234,319 , Vanderbilt
39 $224,847 , Lafayette
40 $221,448 , Davidson
41 $218,566 , Scripps
42 $217,776 , Mt. Holyoke
43 $203,514 , Whitman
44 $197,688 , Colorado College
45 $197,225 , Colgate
46 $195,632 , Cornell
47 $192,064 , Oberlin
48 $168,972 , Holy Cross
49 $160,885 , UC BERKELEY
50 $157,553 , Sewanee</p>
<p>note: at the time this table was put together MIT was not releasing latest endowment figures.</p>
<p>Whew, this topic is not about what i thought it was about</p>
<p>^You should head over to the testosterone thread</p>