@Gator88NE, those endowment figures look impressive; however, as you note they are system-wide therefore its a little misleading. A more relevant figure is the size of the endowment per student. My son recently attended a fly-in program at Swarthmore College, a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania. Swarthmore’s total enrollment is only 1,534 students however the school has an impressive endowment of $1.877 billion. That translates into $1.215 million dollars per student. In comparison UT-Austin’s $25 billion endowment translates into $118,000 per student and A&M is $179,000 per student.
What can Swarthmore do with these kind of resources? Well, my son told me how the student he was matched with as his host told him that the school fully funds any resources that the students request from undergraduate research projects to what they describe as individual “creative projects”- in fact about 70% of the student body participate in these programs. Over 2/3 of the student body participate in study abroad which the college heavily subsidizes.
One of the areas that you really see how much a difference these funds can have is in the financial aid program. Swarthmorel meets 100% of the financial need of all students, with no-loans. The sticker price of the cost of attendance at Swarthmore is greater than $60,000 per year. The student host my son was matched with comes from a working class family in South Texas. He told my son that his family’s total out-of-pocket expense for him to attend Swarthmore was less than $10,000 a year. The remainder of his educational cost were being paid by institutional need-based grants with no-loans and none of it was merit aid. Even if he had stayed in-state to attend UT/TAMU and received need-based grants and some merit aid, its unlikely that his family’s net price would have been lower than going out of state to attend what U.S. News ranks as the #3 liberal arts school in the country. Moreover, the financial aid packages from UT/TAMU would have included subsidized student loans. (The sticker price for my son on the other hand would be almost $40,000 per year but the idea here is to make a college like Swarthmore a reality for any student regardless of their financial background.)
In short, the relevant number is not the total endowment but rather the endowment per student. Measured by that standard, A&M’s endowment is #38 in the nation and UT-Austin is #48. Among public institutions, both schools endowment dollars per student are still fairly impressive as they trail only Virginia and Michigan.
One last thing, most Texans perceive A&M to be a flagship school along the lines of UT-Austin. As I stated earlier, A&M is now the larger school measured by total student body, its campus is larger due to the roots of being an agricultural and mechanical school, and as Aggies are quick to remind Longhorns like myself, A&M is in fact older than UT-Austin. Its interesting however when I travel outside the state and people automatically assume that UT-Austin is “the” state flagship.
My son has pretty much narrowed his college choices down to UT, A&M or Bama. UT is naturally under consideration given the fact that my wife and I are alums. He’s been to Bama Honor’s College this summer and spent a week there with about 60 other students as guest of UA’s Honor’s College. He formed great bonds with several of those kids. Moreover, Bama has the most intriguing programs and with the Presidential Scholarship is actually going to be cheaper than either UT or TAMU. A&M is the closest school to us, about 1.5 hours drive away and to his surprise he enjoyed an overnight stay there during their National Scholar Invitational event. A&M offers its students the most unique collegiate experience of public school in America. The level of loyalty and reverence that the school has for tradition is unmatched anywhere. Moreover, the alumni network is pretty much legendary here in the state of Texas. As @SOSConcern has stated to me, they are all good choices with the exception being the current state of the UT men’s athletics department. No doubt Bama and A&M have the clear edge when it comes to that consideration.
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