“At the Fall Board of Trustees meeting last weekend, the University released its long-awaited endowment figures for the 2018 fiscal year. As reported by DUMAC, the organization tasked with overseeing Duke’s investments, the University’s total endowment now stands at a whopping $8.5 billion, up from last year’s record high of $7.9 billion. Buoyed on by relatively strong growth rates in the private financial sectors—especially the stock market—Duke drew in a 12.9 percent return on its investments, far exceeding the average 8.3 percent gain reported by endowments of all sizes in fiscal 2018 so far.” …
https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2018/10/were-in-the-money-8-5-billion-of-it
25 Largest Endowments January 25, 2018:
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Harvard $36 Billion
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Yale $27
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U Texas system $26,5
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Stanford $24,8
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Princeton $23,8
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MIT $15
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U Penn $12,2
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Texas A&M system $11.56
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Michigan $10.9
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Northwestern $10.44
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Columbia $9.997
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Univ. of California $9.788
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Notre Dame $9.325
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Duke $7.911
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WashUStL $7.86
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Univ. of Chicago $7.524
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Emory $6.9
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Cornell $6.75
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Virginia $6.4
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Rice $5.8
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USC $5.12
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Dartmouth College $4.956
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Ohio State $4.25
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Vanderbilt $4.136
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NYU $3.992
It’s really astounding that U of M has more endowment than the entire Univ. of California system…
It is ot clear as to whether Univ. of California refers to the entire UC system or just to Berkeley.
This number doesn’t include the independent “Duke Endowment” that is worth roughly $4 billion. Duke is the primary beneficiary (34%) of this independent endowment.
Let’s hope the university decides to use this windfall to hire faculty members and improve financial aid instead of building fancier dorms…
@JenniferClint : Who controls the “Duke Endowment” of approximately $4 billion of which one-third is designed to benefit the school ?
Who or what are the other beneficiaries ?
Thank you in advance for any info. that you can & do provide.
The Duke Endowment has its own board of trustees if I recall correctly. The other beneficiaries are hospitals in NC and SC, Methodist churches, and other universities like Furman.
@JenniferClint: Thank you for your response to my question.
The Duke Endowment is completely separate from the University’s own endowment. The Duke Endowment has 4 colleges as permanent beneficiaries which receive almost 50% of the grants annually: Duke (gets largest percentage), Furman, Davidson and Johnson C. Smith University (HBC). The Duke Endowment also funds health care, child care and rural churches in North and South Carolina with the other grants.
@buddyparent – Yes, and just to clarify for others it’s called Duke Endowment because of the family not b/c of the university. In fact, it’s quite the opposite in that Duke University used to be called Trinity and was moved to Durham from a more rural part of NC near the turn of the 20th century and at the same time renamed Duke University after a big donation from the family. Moving and renaming were stipulations of the donation.
The family’s fortune was built on tobacco; however, Duke Energy (one of the largest private utilities in the world) also traces its roots to the family. Duke Energy doesn’t have anything to do with the Duke Endowment or Duke University, today of course.
James B. Duke is the one who set up the Duke Endowment (I think upon his death in the 1920s but I’m not sure about that) with a very restrictive and specific founding charter on how the funds can be used, including the 4 colleges named above (Duke, Davidson, Furman and Johnson C Smith) but also rural Methodist churches and health care. The Endowment is based in Charlotte.