Top Liberal Arts College endowments

<p>Of course, your mileage may vary.</p>

<p>Adding Smith, which had terrific endowment returns this year (16.8%), to the Fiscal 2010 per student endowment list:</p>

<p>$950,472 Pomona College
$827,321 Swarthmore College
$793,710 Amherst College
$730,767 Williams College
$728,025 Grinnell College
$495,377 Bryn Mawr College
$440,143 Bowdoin College
$411,784 Smith College
$289,885 Vassar College
$289,396 Haverford College
$170,504 Wesleyan University
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<p>I checked Wellesley because it should be very high up this list, but no financial statement posted yet. Likewise, nothing from Middlebury.</p>

<p>ID, is there any chance you can convince President Chopp to lower that $827k down to, say, $812k, and build a new field house? With a cushion like that she can’t plead poverty. Lamb-Miller Field House was built in 1935 and is definitely showing its age.</p>

<p>Not a financial disclosure statement, but some interesting tidbits about budgets at Middlebury:</p>

<p>[President</a> offers update on finances, and a look ahead | Middlebury](<a href=“President offers update on finances, and a look ahead | Middlebury News and Announcements”>President offers update on finances, and a look ahead | Middlebury News and Announcements)</p>

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<p>Chopp is just gearing up the “strategic planning” for her first capital campaign. I think field house, engineering facilities, and maybe library addition will be likely candidates for big capital projects. They did just build the new indoor tennis center/fitness facility., but the last campaign was science center, two new dorms, and a major gut/renovation of Parrish Hall. Nothing will be built in the next couple of years. Taking on new debt is not something these colleges want to do right now. No way they want to jeopardize the Moody’s Aaa bond rating. I think Williams will try to do a big bond issue to complete their library project, which pretty much kills their chances of an upgrade to Aaa.</p>

<p>OK, if Midd’s endowment ended the year at $815 million, that would put their per student endowment at $236,232.</p>

<p>Middlebury’s actual 2010 financial statements (not sure why they were so hard to find) are revealing on a number of levels; of the $840,000,000 in total investments listed as of June 2010, fully $770,536,000 were in risky Level III investments like timber and real estate, private equity, hedge funds, etc. That’s like 90% of its entire endowment. To look at it another way, only about $88,000,000 or a little more than 10% were in traditional publicly traded equities and bonds.<a href=“http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/252744/original/finstmtfy10_middlebury_college.pdf[/url]”>http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/252744/original/finstmtfy10_middlebury_college.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
Looks to me like an awful lot of these LACs are engaging in a lot of end of the year window dressing for the sake of their core constituencies.</p>

<p>Thanks for the Midd link. It wasn’t linked from the finance office page – only the prior years’ reports.</p>

<p>That’s misleading for Midd’s endowment. Level three is shares in funds that are not actively market priced every day. Middlebury out-sources almost their entire endowment to Investure in Charlottesville. In essense, Investure acts as a “mutual fund” investing the endowments of about ten colleges in a pool. I believe that technically the Investure shares are not market priced each day, although the underlying investments would be.</p>

<p>Lafayette College’s endowment is approximately $616.5 million.</p>

<p>The total endowment as of June 30,2010, measured on a per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) student basis is approximately $259,000. </p>

<p>The endowment distribution’s support to the College’s operation was $30.974 million, or 24.2% of total operating revenues in FY 2009-10.</p>

<p>The annual endowment distribution in support of the College’s operations was approximately $13,000 per FTE student in FY 2009-10.</p>

<p>The College had an investment return (net of expenses) on its total managed endowment of 13.2% for FY 2009-10.</p>

<p>Here is the link to the Scripps College report:</p>

<p>[Scripps</a> College : Annual Financial Reports](<a href=“http://www.scrippscollege.edu/about/financial-reports.php]Scripps”>http://www.scrippscollege.edu/about/financial-reports.php)</p>

<p>Roughly 254K per student</p>

<p>Trinity University in San Antonio, not technically a LAC, though it may as well be, is back over $1billion in endowment, as posted Sept. 15, 2010 on the website. Per student endowment is ~$418,000.</p>