List of U.S. colleges and universities by endowment

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This list of U.S. colleges and universities by endowment contains endowment numbers for large universities in the United States. A sample of university endowments outside of the U.S. has been included for comparison.

Note on the below table: The National Association of College and University Business Officers (representatives of the below institutions) assemble endowment statistics for comparison once a year in January. The last release was January 2006, and this is considered the official rankings until the January 2007 numbers are officially released. In the table below we show the ranks and values from the January 2006 report, as well as "latest" updates on the current endowment value. The latter number does not affect rank, and is for informational purposes only.^[1]

Contents 1 List of United States College and University Endowments[2] (NACUBO: Highest to Lowest) 1.1 List of International University Endowments 2 Largest endowments per student 3 Institutions (NACUBO Data[[1]]: top 25 in absolute size) by 20 year endowment growth 4 Notes 5 References

[edit] List of United States College and University Endowments^[2] (NACUBO: Highest to Lowest)

Institution	Endowment (2005) in billions of US$	Endowment (2006) in billions of US$
Harvard University	$25.5	$28.915[3]
Yale University	$15.2	$18.030[4]
Stanford University	$12.2	$14.084[5]
*University of Texas System	$11.610	$13.234[6]
Princeton University	$11.207	$13.044[7]
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	$6.712	$8.368[8]
Columbia University	$5.191	$5.937[9]
*University of California	$5.222	$5.733[10]
University of Michigan	$4.931	$5.652[11]
*Texas A&M University System	$4.964	$5.642[10]
University of Pennsylvania	$4.370	$5.313
Northwestern University	$4.215	$5.140[12]
Emory University	$4.376	$4.870[10]
University of Chicago	$4.137	$4.867[13]
Washington University in St. Louis	$4.312	$4.684[14]
Duke University	$3.826	$4.497[15]
University of Notre Dame	$3.650	$4.436[16]
Cornell University	$3.777	$4.321[17]
Rice University	$3.611	$3.986[10]
University of Virginia	$3.219	$3.618[18]
University of Southern California	$2.746	$3.065[10]
Dartmouth College	$2.714	$3.092[19]
Vanderbilt University	$2.628	$2.946[10]
Johns Hopkins University	$2.177	$2.350[10]
University of Minnesota	$1.969	$2.224[10]
Brown University	$1.8	$2.166[20]
New York University	$1.548	$2.018* (As of 02/2007)[21]
University of Pittsburgh	$1.530	$1.802[22]
Rockefeller University	$1.557	$1.771
Case Western Reserve University	$1.516	$1.598
Williams College	$1.514	$1.56[23]
California Institute of Technology	$1.418	$1.580
UNC Chapel Hill	$1.486
University of Rochester	$1.370	$1.491
Grinnell College	$1.390	$1.471
Purdue University	$1.341	$1.493
Pomona College		$1.459[24]
Boston College	$1.270	$1.400[25]
Amherst College	$1.155	$1.337[26]
Michigan State University	$1.325
Wellesley College	$1.276
University of Delaware	$1.200
Swarthmore College	$1.164	$1.245
Tufts University	$1.153	$1.215[27]
University of Richmond	$1.208
Penn State University	$1.175
Yeshiva University	$1.149
*University of Illinois	$1.148
*University of Wisconsin-Madison	$1.125 (reflects UW Foundation only)[28]
*Indiana University	$1.107
*University of Nebraska	$1.042
Smith College	$1.036
Texas Christian University	$1.033
University of Cincinnati	$1.032
The George Washington University	$1.019
Southern Methodist University	$1.013
Baylor College of Medicine	$1.008

*Denotes the aggregate of a cluster of institutions (university system)

[edit] List of International University Endowments

Institution	Endowment
University of Cambridge	$5.87B U.S.
University of Oxford	$5.11B U.S.
Kyoto University	$2.20B U.S.
University of Toronto	$1.52B U.S.
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology	$970M U.S.
University of Melbourne	$860M U.S.[29]
University of Sydney	$815M U.S.
McGill University	$832.8M U.S.
University of British Columbia	$670M U.S.
National University of Singapore	$620M U.S.

[edit] Largest endowments per student

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 comparisions 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.

Rank	Institution	Endowment per Student (2005)	Endowment per Student (2006)
1.	Princeton University	$1,679,380
2.	Yale University	$1,342,099
3.	Harvard University	$1,291,051
4.	Grinnell College	$893,666
5.	Pomona College	$837,825
6.	Swarthmore College	$789,735
7.	Rice University	$726,147
8.	Stanford University	$714,620
9.	Amherst College	$698,469	$820,846 [26]
10.	Williams College	$666,193
11.	California Institute of Technology	$653,726
12.	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	$650,430
13.	Wellesley College	$557,243
14.	Dartmouth College	$475,859
15.	Northwestern University	$440,068
16.	Baylor College of Medicine	$426,326
17.	Smith College	$361,572
18.	Emory University	$360,662
19.	Washington University in St. Louis	$319,015
20.	University of Notre Dame	$317,991
21.	Berry College	$290,715

[edit] Institutions (NACUBO Data[[1]]: top 25 in absolute size) by 20 year endowment growth

Rank Order	Name	Aggregate Arithmetic Growth )	Per Annum Exponential Growth )	Endowment in 2006	Endowment in 1986
1.	University of Michigan	2247%	15.56%	$5,652,262	$251,517
2.	Tufts University	1215%	12.49%	$1,215,413	$100,000[30]
3.	Duke University	1140%	12.59%	$4,497,718	$362,706
4.	University of Notre Dame	1041%	12.17%	$4,436,624	$388,965
5.	University of Virginia	963%	11.82%	$3,618,172	$340,387
6.	Yale	937%	11.69%	$18,030,600	$1,739,460
7.	University of Pennsylvania	884%	11.43%	$5,313,268	$540,084
8.	Stanford	837%	11.19%	$14,084,676	$1,502,583
9.	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	761%	10.77%	$8,368,066	$971,346
10.	University of Southern California	747%	10.69%	$3,065,935	$361,784
11.	Harvard	742%	10.65%	$28,915,706	$3,435,013
12.	Northwestern	625%	9.9%	$5,140,668	$709,236
13.	Princeton	575%	9.54%	$13,044,900	$1,934,010
14.	Vanderbilt	560%	9.43%	$2,946,392	$446,458
15.	Emory	554%	9.39%	$4,870,019	$745,188
16.	Dartmouth	547%	9.34%	$3,092,100	$477,774
17.	Cornell	541%	9.29%	$4,321,199	$673,848
18.	University of Chicago	506%	9.01%	$4,867,030	$802,500
19.	Rice	427%	8.31%	$3,986,664	$755,782
20.	University of Texas	423%	8.27%	$13,234,848	$2,530,730
21.	Case Western Reserve	420%	8.25%	$1,598,566	$307,250
22.	Texas A&M System	408%	8.13%	$5,642,978	$1,110,440
23.	Washington University	389%	7.93%	$4,684,737	$958,461
24.	Johns Hopkins	378%	7.82%	$2,350,749	$491,543
25.	Columbia	369%	7.72%	$5,937,814	$1,266,640

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• 2006 National Association of College and University Business Officers Endowment Study (PDF)
• 2005 National Association of College and University Business Officers Endowment Study (PDF)
• Yale Posts Highest Endowment Returns, Topping Stanford, Harvard (November 22, 2005). Bloomberg.com.
• Colleges/Universities: Endowment per Student for 2004