I didn’t include any graduate students at any of the schools I mentioned because this thread is more about undergrad as most people here are in this site for. However, if you include graduates in this, while Penn and Cornell have a total size of 22,000, UMich (which seem like everyone here is using as the main example for public schools) has a total size of 46,000. This is double the size of Penn, and still has less endowment. So, I not sure what’s you point.
Caltech comes in at 2 billion and MIT at 14.8 billion but that does not make MIT 7 times better than Caltech.
Its hard to know how to interpret endowments, and I had never looked at them until prompted by this post. Its an interesting premise that higher endowment is something to look at and could mean , or" less crisis", but I am not sure if it really follows. Caltech is much smaller than MIT though, so do we normalize for size? Hasn’t Forbes Magazine already calculated this for us? Debt might be good to look at though, as well.
Here is an interesting article about two arguably excellent public schools with low endowments, but rising-
http://www.dbknews.com/archives/article_5c8039ea-ab4a-11e4-ad60-17e48b8e5f30.html
I have noticed that medical schools have the highest endowments. Maybe obvious to all but me.
As students get better jobs, donations go up and endowments eventually go up as the university hires better fund raisers. Endowment is linked to age and fund raising and size.
U of Maryland is anything but a crisis situation, its an amazing option for more and more kids who even come from
OOS and get merit that may almost match their in state price.
It seems like it would be more fair to rank colleges by + and to do this both on a total value basis and per student basis.
@Coloradomama The figures in places like Forbes become out of date unless you look for the most recent figures. Wikipedia’s first table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment includes data through 2017, but the second table “Endowments per student” uses 2015 data. (Not that I’m volunteering to update it.)
For example, MIT’s 2017 endowment was $14.97 billion and Caltech’s 2017 endowment was $2.61 billion (according to NACUBO). So, you compared MIT’s 2017 value with Caltech’s value from 2016. (Google search’s data for Caltech’s endowment lags, likely because Caltech’s fiscal year ends in September vs. June for many universities.)
On a per student (undergrad + grad) basis, MIT’s 2017 endowment was $1.32 million and Caltech’s was $1.17 million.
P.S. What’s the difference between the “market value of the total endowment” vs. “endowment investment pool”? The former is $2.65 billion for Caltech 2017 and the latter is $2.61 billion for 2017.
Private colleges experiencing financial trouble:
2017 Forbes Financial Grades:
I guess posters don’t read my posts before commenting.
- Yes, STEM and business will get the lions share of the money at public universities at the expense of the other majors, so those majors (STEM and business) will stay relatively competitive for some time to come.
- In-state tuition is a "good deal" and that includes going OOS but paying in state prices. Personally I don't see a ton of difference for flagship universities in STEM and business. So going to Maryland vs UMich in STEM doesn't buy you a lot.
@sushiritto Cherry picking endowments, not really, just comparing top private vs top public, if you want choose #80 for private and public and do your comparison there, it will garner the same result. Just don’t pick the #3 public and compare it to the #50 private.
Yes its certainly the case the some posters will like to justify the money spent on private schools by posting how much better they are. Simply not the case for me. My concern here is for the tilting table away from public universities and how the financials simply don’t work out for them in the long term. They’ll always be around but the “haves” and the “have nots” will continue to come more pronounces, somewhat of a reflection on were things are heading in our society as a whole.
If you don’t think there is a degradation in the quality of education just look at one stat, the increasing size of classes over the last 30 years at public universities.
Student-faculty ratio would be a better statistic, since universities have expanded in size, offerings, and employees. Also the impact of the Internet in education, since it didn’t really exist 30 years ago.
First, I’m not an alum of Michigan.
I’m trying to look at it from the perspective of a California parent evaluating a good-to-excellent OOS public, so I looked for student-faculty ratio from the CDS’s of Michigan dating back to 1999. The CDS for 1998 required too much time to figure out, so I gave up. :))
2017 15:1
2016 15:1
2015 15:1
2014 15:1
2013 15:1
2012 16:1
2011 16:1
2010 15:1
2009 15:1
2008 15:1
2007 15:1
2006 15:1
2005 15:1
2004 15:1
2003 15:1
2002 15:1
2001 15:1
2000 16:1
1999 16:1
At least Michigan doesn’t appear to be having an “increasing class size” problem, as long as you can hire more teachers/professors.
Just another article about how public colleges have been targets of being cut in budget, with the exception of a few.
Regardless of where one goes to college, they will still be successful in life IF they work for it.
@MrElonMusk Absolutely! But it just some schools (both public and private) make the path for their student “easier” since they better professors, better faculty to student ratio, more research opportunities/funding, better financial aids, etc.
If it wasn’t for the current laws on student loan forgiveness for government employees the entire college system would collapse.
@thomas4881 I jsut did a quick google search on the student loan forgiveness for government employees, which I know nothing about. It said that student loans are forgiven if working full time at qualifying employers and made 120 monthly payments toward your student loans. So that would mean paying the loan for 10 years. But would the loan be almost fully paid after 10 years? I still don’t quite get how this work tbh.
It depends on how much they borrowed. You can pay back around $10,000 at 5% interest in on $30,000 in ten years.
Proof of the pudding is…
I thought that I will be having to use my years of Consulting contacts to get my D2 internships. She is studying MechE at GTech. On the contrary, not only has she been inundated with internship and research opportunities while studying at this public institution, she landed a job with a top tier “B-school” consulting firm 9 months prior to graduation, though she had not interned with them. Her plan down the road is to do her MBA at a M-7 B-school. And yes, we are full pay as we are OOS.
Tremendous value for a great education!
Wanted to share this article in today’s WSJ… not directly related to this thread though it is about the role of Tech and a public univ.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pimcos-new-bond-king-could-be-a-robot-1524567600
“Pimco will open a new office in Austin, Texas, later this year to help recruit more tech-savvy workers who might otherwise spurn the bond manager for traditional software companies, people familiar with the matter said. The Newport Beach, Calif.-based firm plans to grow its workforce by 10% this year, adding about 250 new staff.
Many of those new employees will be engineers tasked with modernizing Pimco’s technology systems, from the tools used to harness new databases of information to the platforms that trade bonds electronically. The changes aim to sharpen investment ideas and lower costs.”
“Pimco negotiated with officials from the three cities before choosing Austin earlier this month. The Texas city is close to a number of institutional investors, including some Pimco clients, boasts a technology corridor and is home to the University of Texas. “That is a key factor as we look to build up the office to about 200 employees by the end of 2019,” Mr. Roman wrote in a memo sent Monday to employees.”
@Angelababy30 After 10 years when the student loans are forgiven the amount forgiven has to be declared as income to the IRS. Then you have to pay taxes on it. You can get the forgiven if you qualify.