It seems that it is usually the private schools like USC, Harvard, Stanford, Notre Dame and elite public schools such as UMich-Ann Arbor with large endowments. Michigan State isn’t even ranked in the top 70 schools according to US News… I’m just wondering does anyone know why this is so?
Also, sorry if this question sounds condescending, it’s not meant to be (as I will be enrolling at MSU this upcoming fall). I am asking simply out of curiousity.
Well, the figure may not represent a particularly large endowment for school of that size. Grinnell College, for perspective, a school 1/30th the size of MSU, currently has an endowment of 1.8 billion.
Per capita it’s not a particularly large endowment.
It’s just like China having the world’s 2nd largest economy. But if you divide China’s GDP by the humungous number of people in the country, per capita, China ranks well below Brazil.
@merc81 and @GMTplus7 I will have to politely disagree to an extent. Although that endowment is not super impressive for a school of MSU’s size, it is still pretty good. Compare MSU’s endowment with other state schools of similar caliber like Rutgers and Alabama - both in the same size range (roughly), but with significantly smaller endowments.
Yeah, I agree with @yikesyikesyikes because although it does not have a large endowment per student attending, it is relatively high. UC Berkeley has a $4b endowment and UCLA has a $3b endowment and they all have roughly the same student body size… and, I wouldn’t exactly say MSU is academically on the same level as UCB and UCLA (overall).
According to http://www.hughcalc.org/, the school had a 31% increase in endowment money between 2013 and 2014, jumping up by nearly $600,000,000. I’m just curious as to why the endowment might be so high (and how did it increase so fast?). Did students really love the school? Was there one specific alumni who donated a lot? etc.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t MSU a big time basketball school? If that’s the case then that might be the answer. School with well known spots team tend to being endowments. Even if they’re not a top 100. Ole Miss is a example of this.
@sensation723 yes! It’s a B16 time basketball and football school!
They have also done a good job on handling their endowment investments from what I have read.
MSU’s endowment isn’t out of the ordinary among the Great Lakes (Big10) publics which are research powerhouses. PSU, OSU, IU, PU, UIUC, UW-Madison, UMinny (and Pitt) all have endowments ranging from 1.97B to 3.67B.
BTW, Ole Miss’s endowment is less than $1B.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
Also note that the B10 has a strong middle class. Of the top 15 publics with the biggest endowments, 9 of them are Big10 schools (and Northwestern is in the top 10 overall in endowment size, trailing only HYPSM among privates).
@PurpleTitan do you have a link to the top 15 public schools with largest endowments? I’ve been trying to find a ranking for public schools only but couldn’t find one
Nah, but you can look at the link I posted and just count the ones that are public.