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The following are three lists of U.S. institutions of higher education by endowment:

1. Largest endowments
2. Largest endowments per student
3. Certain universities by endowment growth between 1986 and 2007

Lists of institutions of higher education by endowment are also available.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness. Sourced additions are welcome and you can help by expanding it.

Endowments > $1 billion

For this list, short scale billions (thousand of millions) are used. Figures are from the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).^{1 2 3}

Endowment per student

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (February 2007)

While total endowment size is a useful measurement of the wealth of a university, it is not necessarily the best means of comparing the financial resources of different universities because it does not take into account the size of the institution. For example, Emory University's endowment may be more than four times larger than Smith's, but Emory's endowment also has to support more than four times as many students. As a result, the two schools have about the same amount of money to spend per student from their respective endowments. That being said, comparing the size of endowments per student can misrepresent the resources of smaller colleges because large universities can take better advantage of economies of scale and are generally able to get better returns on their investments.

Endowment to student ratios can also be misinterpreted when considering to what degree dollars actually go to their students. Large graduate schools can receive a much higher proportion of funds while undergraduates at the same institution may see a much smaller percentage spent in their interest. However, the modern university system funds all elements of the academic enterprise from a common funding pool. As a result, through the substitution effect, well funded divisions implicitly subsize less well funded divisions by relaxing the constraints on budgetary overhead.

In addition, inasmuch as most schools observe the 5% spending rule -- spending roughly 5% of their endowment each year under various regulatory mandates -- state funding of public institutions provides a form of quasi-endowment that may be measured in the billions of dollars. For example, a state subsidy of $50 million equates to an implied endowment equivalent of $1 billion. That is, having received $50 million from state allocations is as useful to a university or college as having an endowment equivalent amount of $1 billion in private endowment funds from which income may be drawn. Thus the traditional measure ignores this disparity, which is well recognized by entities such as the Carnegie endowment and other entities which compute not-for-profit metrics.

Likewise, each dollar drawn into an institution via the research funding channel provides a similar quasi-endowment equivalent. Therefore a $50 million dollar increment in an institution's research budget replaces the need to stockpile $1 billion in equivalent liquid instruments. Such institutions typically place into service many millions -- if not hundreds of millions -- of dollars worth of capital equipment each year, thus the capital stock of large research institutions is both retired and replaced more frequently. A large research institution may turn over its entire capital stock in the course of a decade, and the resulting churn in infrastructure value also represents an implied endowment or quasi-endowment of many billions of dollars.

Thus true inter-institutional endowment comparisons which do not detail quasi-endowments represented by state funding initiatives as well as external research funding grossly mistate the comparability between institutions which may, or may not, be inherently non-comparable.

Note that references for the 2005 figures in the table below have not been provided, other than for Bryn Athyn College; presumably the 2005 figures come from the Chronicle of Higher Education (see next footnote), though this has not been confirmed; note also that the 2005 figures from the Chronicle are suspect (Bryn Athyn, for example, has only 150 students according to the college's own website, not 374 as the Chronicle's ranking states).⁵

Note that there are some inconsistencies in calculating the 2006 figures in the table below; figures for some schools (e.g., Princeton, Yale, Swarthmore, Williams, Davidson) are based on referenced, overall endowment estimates from early 2007; figures for other schools are based on referenced, overall endowment reports from 2006; furthermore, some figures are calculated with enrollment numbers that include students studying off campus (e.g., Middlebury), while other calculations exclude off-campus students (e.g., Bowdoin); finally, although most calculations are based on enrollments for 2006-2007, some derive from the 2005-2006 academic year (e.g., Bowdoin); eliminating these inconsistencies is difficult due to variations in schools' reporting practices.

Certain institutions by endowment growth

All data are from NACUBO.(Talk:List of U.S. colleges and universities by endowment#Endowment per year): initial top 25 endowments in absolute size as of 1986.

References and footnotes

General references:

• 2007 National Association of College and University Business Officers Endowment Study (PDF)
• 2006 National Association of College and University Business Officers Endowment Study (PDF)
• 2005 National Association of College and University Business Officers Endowment Study (PDF)
• Colleges/Universities: Endowment per Student for 2004 from questbridge.org
• Dada, Kamil (February 1, 2008). "Congress investigates endowment". Stanford Daily.

Specific references and footnotes:

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 19 November 2008, at 04:32.

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