Talk:List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment
Updated 2005 figures
Added the figures published on Bloomberg (as of roughly 11/22/2005)for top set of 25 or so universities. Didn't reorder/renumber list
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=afIqiSrR2HUY
Fiscal 2005 Performance of U.S. Higher-Education Endowment Funds
Institution Fund Size Return Return
June 30 2004-05 2003-2004
Harvard University $25.9 Bln 19.2% 21.1% Yale University $15.2 Bln 22.3% 19.4% Stanford University $12.4 Bln 19.5% 18.0% University of Texas $11.6 Bln 13.6% 20.1% Princeton University $11.2 Bln 17.0% 16.5% Massachusetts Institute
of Technology $6.7 Bln 17.6% 18.1%
University of California $5.2 Bln 10.3% 14.7% Texas A&M University $5.0 Bln 9.7% 21.0% University of Michigan $4.9 Bln 19.1% 20.7% Columbia University $4.9 Bln 17.7% 16.9% University of Pennsylvania $4.4 Bln 8.5% 16.9% Washington Univ. (St. Louis) $4.4 Bln 10.0% 18.2% Emory University $4.4 Bln 6.8% 14.6% Northwestern University $4.2 Bln 15.1% 19.2% University of Notre Dame $4.1 Bln 19.1% 20.3% University of Chicago $4.1 Bln 18.1% 16.6% Cornell University $3.9 Bln 13.6% 16.1% Duke University $3.8 Bln 18.1% 18.0% Rice University $3.6 Bln 13.6% 17.2% Dartmouth College $2.7 Bln 14.4% 18.6% University of Virginia $2.6 Bln 14.3% 12.7% Vanderbilt University $2.6 Bln 17.9% 16.9% Univ. of Southern California $2.3 Bln 17.8% 16.9% Johns Hopkins University $2.0 Bln 9.6% 15.3% Brown University $1.9 Bln 13.3% 16.3%
Source: 2005 Bloomberg survey of the 25 largest higher-education endowments. Schools drawn from 2004 ranking by National Association of College and University Business Officers. All endowment figures and returns are through June 30.
Open Questions
Why are the figures in the thousands (could be confusing if people didnt read the top) and why doesnt the list use mediawiki markup of # instead of some other mark up. I will fix the former point in a few days but the latter is harder because i dont know how to recreaste the tabbed formatting. --AMorris (talk)●(contribs) 10:35, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, actually Anthony, when representing something such as an endowment with twelve figures, you should always display the results in "thousands" form. One wants to be accurate, but not so much as to be precise. This is the same format multi-billion dollar companies use when representing their annual income--it's the correct way to represent figures this large (especially when rounding; no one cares to know how many "dollars in the ones place one has:" ex. $1,340,305,001 [who needs to know that someone has One Billion, Three Hundred and Forty Million, Three Hundred and Five Thousand, and One Dollar]) That being said, let's leave it as it is... -- Zephern
New Question: I apologize if this question is in the wrong place. What has happened to the 23rd through 26th rankings for the overall endowments? -R. Christopher
New Question: The numbers in the chart are wrong. All wrong. They site this source:
http://www.nacubo.org/documents/research/FY05NESInstitutionsbyTotalAssets.pdf
But the numbers don't match up at all. The chart should either be updated or removed, and replaced with a link that to the statistics that it erroneously cites. 64.131.159.120 21:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree the numbers are often wrong. I have been allocating some effort to keeping the top twenty accurate, both for the 2005 nacubo and the "latest" numbers the universities produced for fiscal year 2006. And that's just for the endowments. I pay little attention to endowment per student, the non-usa endowments, and the endowment growth figures. An open-edit site like wikipedia is not optimal for presenting these data.
Source
I'd recommend looking at the Chronicle of Higher Education for a source to these figures. Besselfunctions 04:59, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
New data
Some new information is available at [1] for someone who has time to put it in. —Bkell 19:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Resources (rather than endowment) Per Student
Endowment per-student, as is true of many metrics (in particular rankings), penalizes public versus private, and large versus small.
Universities are not closed loops that use endowment only. Universities are open systems that gather state and federal money for research, as well as state money (especially true for publics: from state entities to public schools as tuition off-set for in-state students), as well as scholarships and loans…
Universities, as not-for-profits, are generally run under the so-called 5% rule: they must, in approximate terms, spend 5% of capital in order to retain their charitable designation. Multiplying the annual budget by 20 should give us a very approximate sense of endowment-equivalent capital from which annual funds must be drawn.
In recognition of this not so subtle difference between endowment per student and resources per student, most serious studies of this topic (The Lombardi Studies, Carnegie, AAU…) use endowment-equivalent (in the same sense as I am using it) as their measure for resources available to fund programs. For example see slide #15:
Here is one simple example using several variants for “large state school” and using the 5% rule: 1) If I use the 5% rule, and assume that the annual budget is funded out of someone’s “endowment” somewhere (at least in the econometric sense), the annual budget of $4.2Bn means that the school is spending $84Bn endowment equivalent (someone – somewhere -- has a pool of capital 20 times larger than the annual budget from which 5% of the earnings must be drawn to fund the annual budget); with an aggressive estimate of 50,000 students (many of the figures might – arguably -- be adjusted to 40,000 students on the main campus), the resources per student are $1,680,000/FTE, or larger than Princeton’s $/FTE; 2) However, the hospital portion of this particular budget is quite distortive (a tiny fraction of students and huge fraction of the total budget), so let’s use $2.8Bn and 50,000, to get endowment equivalent of $56Bn, and per student total of $1,120,000/FTE, or good for 4th place on the list. However, this figure must be reduced further for the student-contributed portion. 3) Using non-student provided funds, the figures are $758,000/FTE (good for 7th place on the list on an FTE basis) and $38Bn endowment equivalent. In other words, net of student contribution, this institution has a rather large endowment-equivalent pool of funds to draw upon to fund the annual budget – far beyond what the endowment alone would suggest, and far beyond the $/FTE from such a limited definition of endowment.
So, using resource equivalent, we have a state school that isn’t ranked in the top 50 for $/FTE, but which school, quite arguably, applies the 4th highest dollar level – nationally -- of resources per student per annum.
Below is a back of the envelope (5 minutes in Excel) breakdown: the average student provides under $14,000 per annum for an endowment equivalent of $13.76Bn (this back-of-envelope figure is actually much higher than the in-state tuition of roughly $9,800, and understates the university funded portion, hence understates the endowment equivalent provided by the university by 50% per annum per student); 2) the university provides roughly $38,000 per annum for an endowment equivalent of $38Bn (the more aggressive figure would $42,000/FTE per annum or roughly $42Bn endowment-equivalent).
Totaling the figures, the school is spending roughly $52,000/per_Year/Per_Student, for An endowment equivalent total of $50Bn+.
This may sound counter-intuitive, but consider this, university funding has to come from somewhere. In other words, via the substitution principle, whatever the student doesn’t have to provide is as good as “real” or traditional endowment funding. What counts is not what the student provides (typically a fraction of the actually operating cost at a state school), but what the student is a beneficiary of: modern campus (average building age of less than 10 years over 28MM square feet), deep research facilities, libraries, museums…
Clearly, for a state school, these things are not purchased out of endowment, but out of annual resources. To the student, the sources are transparent and somewhat irrelevant, they are beneficiaries of anything that reduces their expenditures.
Annual Amount Endowment_Equivalent Students Resources Per Student Annual_Income Comments $4,200,000,000 $84,000,000,000 50,000 $1,680,000 $84,000 Equivalent uses 5% rule on total budget
$2,800,000,000 $56,000,000,000 50,000 $1,120,000 $56,000 Equivalent uses 5% rule on budget net of hospitals
$246,500,000 $4,930,000,000 50,000 $98,600 $4,930 Traditional Endowment: annual
$250,000,000 $5,000,000,000 50,000 $100,000 $5,000 Student Aid: Loans, Scholarships, Aid…
$775,000,000 $15,500,000,000 50,000 $310,000 $15,500 Research Portfolio
$250,000,000 $5,000,000,000 50,000 $100,000 $5,000 Capital Budget: Annual
$325,000,000 $6,500,000,000 50,000 $130,000 $6,500 State Aid: Annual
Legislative Grant
$48,000,000 $960,000,000 50,000 $19,200 $960 Libraries $1,894,500,000 $37,890,000,000 $757,800 $37,890 SubTotal Non_Student Funded
$88,000,000 $1,760,000,000 50,000 $35,200 $1,760 Housing $600,000,000 $12,000,000,000 50,000 $240,000 $12,000 Tuition $688,000,000 $13,760,000,000 $275,200 $13,760 SubTotal Student Funded
$2,582,500,000 $51,650,000,000 $1,033,000 $51,650 Total Line Items
In sum: 1) the traditional measure of endowment is fairly meaningless in absolute value terms; 2) the measure of per capita is worse than useless for state schools as it is inherently misleading; 3) the economies of scale mentioned do provide an offset in the form of better libraries and better lab space but are not quantified, and the above seeks to provide metrization for some of those benefits; 4) both public and private schools share these common sources of funding, but at different levels of magnitude, thus rather than an FTE differential analysis, it would be easier to back upward into the endowment-equivalent, then divide by FTE count.
To get this story right, the 2nd table on this page should be adjusted upward for: 1) research budgets; 2) state funding; 3) funding to students through tuition remission, grants; 4) capital replacement budgets…
Endowment per year
Endowment per year - That would be an interesting figure. Can anybody create a paragraph about it?
If you paste this back into Excel, it should work
SCHOOL Growth_Post_95 Growth_Total 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 Harvard 12.39% 10.54% $25,474,000 $22,143,649 $18,849,491 $17,169,757 $17,950,800 $18,844,338 $14,255,996 $13,019,736 $10,919,670 $8,811,785 $7,045,863 $6,201,220 $5,778,257 $5,118,118 $4,669,683 $4,653,299 $4,478,976 $4,155,778 $4,018,270 $3,435,013 Yale 13.03% 11.46% $15,225,000 $12,747,150 $11,034,600 $10,523,600 $10,632,000 $10,084,900 $7,197,900 $6,624,449 $5,742,000 $4,853,010 $3,959,080 $3,529,000 $3,219,400 $2,833,100 $2,566,680 $2,570,892 $2,336,495 $2,055,871 $2,098,400 $1,739,460 Stanford*** 12.31% 11.04% $12,205,000 $9,922,000 $8,614,000 $7,612,769 $8,249,551 $8,885,905 $6,226,695 $4,774,888 $4,667,002 $3,779,420 $3,402,825 $3,034,533 $2,853,366 $2,428,491 $2,299,483 $2,060,305 $2,083,916 $1,710,198 $1,839,490 $1,502,583 U of Texas** 7.88% 7.91% $11,611,000 $10,336,687 $8,708,818 $8,630,679 $9,363,590 $10,013,175 $8,128,298 $7,647,309 $6,709,945 $5,697,150 $5,043,333 $4,549,214 $4,599,075 $3,655,151 $3,374,301 $3,731,826 $3,021,474 $2,779,796 $2,829,000 $2,530,730 Princeton 10.12% 9.18% $11,207,000 $9,928,200 $8,730,100 $8,319,600 $8,359,000 $8,398,100 $6,469,200 $5,582,800 $4,940,900 $4,467,000 $3,882,421 $3,446,818 $3,286,327 $3,003,122 $2,624,082 $2,527,140 $2,483,829 $2,308,073 $2,291,110 $1,934,010 M.I.T. 11.25% 10.15% $6,712,000 $5,865,212 $5,133,613 $5,359,423 $6,134,710 $6,475,506 $4,287,701 $3,678,127 $3,045,756 $2,476,600 $2,078,414 $1,777,777 $1,752,943 $1,589,261 $1,442,526 $1,404,588 $1,256,165 $1,139,101 $1,169,740 $971,346 University of California * 8.43% 24.20% $5,222,000 $4,767,466 $4,368,911 $4,199,067 $4,532,710 $5,639,777 $4,315,219 $3,787,884 $3,133,252 $2,572,492 $2,143,393 $1,750,203 $1,834,955 $391,513 $331,364 $85,403 $68,493 $68,493 $68,493 $68,493 Columbia 8.24% 7.31% $5,191,000 $4,493,085 $4,343,151 $4,238,162 $4,324,000 $4,263,972 $3,636,621 $3,425,992 $3,038,907 $2,558,090 $2,172,869 $1,918,148 $1,846,600 $1,683,014 $1,525,904 $1,494,938 $1,460,356 $1,374,608 $1,387,060 $1,266,640 Texas A&M System 7.59% 7.77% $4,964,000 $4,373,047 $3,802,712 $3,743,442 $4,205,849 $4,205,849 $3,746,624 $3,531,517 $2,951,463 $2,458,043 $2,220,016 $2,055,808 $1,848,525 $1,483,179 $1,395,454 $1,178,641 $1,178,641 $1,178,641 $1,214,220 $1,110,440 U of Michigan 12.72% 16.04% $4,931,000 $4,163,382 $3,464,515 $3,375,689 $3,614,100 $3,468,372 $2,525,612 $2,303,054 $1,988,835 $1,624,349 $1,321,432 $1,005,198 $797,149 $611,850 $500,430 $448,209 $422,809 $346,337 $287,539 $251,517 Emory 6.31% 9.25% $4,376,000 $4,535,587 $4,019,766 $4,551,873 $4,279,370 $5,032,683 $4,475,755 $5,104,801 $4,273,543 $3,013,112 $2,232,188 $1,691,166 $1,763,518 $1,658,216 $1,289,630 $1,153,875 $923,612 $772,655 $798,549 $745,188 U. of Pennsylvania 9.10% 11.02% $4,370,000 $4,018,660 $3,547,473 $3,393,297 $3,381,850 $3,200,812 $3,281,342 $3,059,401 $2,535,312 $2,108,961 $1,675,740 $1,464,455 $1,095,796 $974,399 $825,601 $808,409 $761,408 $664,637 $648,528 $540,084 Washington U 6.84% 7.75% $4,268,000 $4,000,823 $3,470,072 $3,517,104 $3,951,510 $4,234,599 $3,761,686 $3,445,743 $2,798,221 $2,305,686 $2,060,963 $1,687,413 $1,687,413 $1,533,445 $1,442,616 $1,365,588 $1,294,209 $1,141,302 $1,199,930 $958,461 Northwestern 10.28% 9.32% $4,215,000 $3,668,405 $3,051,167 $3,022,733 $3,256,280 $3,368,233 $2,634,850 $2,397,715 $1,798,900 $1,763,000 $1,437,000 $1,275,412 $1,308,363 $1,198,718 $1,046,905 $983,566 $893,680 $827,341 $802,670 $709,236 U of Chicago 10.51% 8.55% $4,138,000 $3,620,728 $3,221,833 $3,255,368 $3,516,240 $3,828,664 $2,762,686 $2,359,358 $2,031,131 $1,675,559 $1,377,990 $1,223,980 $1,224,036 $1,151,318 $1,080,462 $1,074,505 $973,697 $897,826 $913,600 $802,500 Duke U 15.53% 12.50% $3,826,000 $3,313,859 $3,017,261 $2,927,478 $2,496,810 $2,663,891 $1,678,728 $1,359,992 $1,134,290 $966,669 $782,093 $699,003 $669,075 $555,586 $460,771 $472,923 $426,183 $392,893 $362,706 $362,706 Cornell 8.92% 9.00% $3,777,000 $3,238,350 $2,854,771 $2,853,742 $3,151,380 $3,436,926 $2,869,103 $2,527,871 $2,125,070 $1,829,185 $1,475,577 $1,248,980 $1,214,600 $1,078,400 $953,600 $926,900 $823,000 $716,606 $725,096 $673,848 U of Notre Dame 12.52% 11.85% $3,650,000 $3,095,703 $2,573,346 $2,554,004 $2,829,910 $3,089,007 $1,984,256 $1,766,176 $1,467,808 $1,227,256 $996,895 $878,928 $828,554 $726,574 $637,234 $605,630 $542,501 $463,502 $456,099 $388,965 Rice 8.12% 8.13% $3,611,000 $3,302,455 $2,937,649 $2,939,804 $3,243,030 $3,372,458 $2,936,622 $2,790,627 $2,321,757 $1,850,312 $1,529,982 $1,278,524 $1,302,576 $1,254,411 $1,140,044 $1,068,633 $970,817 $873,149 $857,155 $755,782 U of Virginia 13.19% 11.89% $3,219,000 $2,793,225 $1,800,882 $1,686,625 $1,708,200 $1,738,984 $1,398,068 $1,227,880 $1,098,539 $937,206 $823,935 $724,794 $634,600 $557,116 $507,002 $487,007 $446,476 $396,692 $396,329 $340,387 U of Southern California 10.86% 10.67% $2,746,000 $2,399,960 $2,113,666 $2,130,977 $2,086,250 $2,152,589 $1,589,833 $1,432,786 $1,204,672 $1,022,339 $883,798 $791,355 $669,063 $588,782 $522,931 $495,595 $459,828 $403,685 $401,171 $361,784 Dartmouth 10.53% 9.07% $2,714,000 $2,454,293 $2,121,183 $2,186,610 $2,414,230 $2,490,376 $1,710,585 $1,519,708 $1,277,753 $1,082,934 $902,234 $788,007 $743,670 $661,529 $593,952 $593,952 $632,027 $570,616 $537,272 $477,774 Vanderbilt 11.45% 9.27% $2,628,000 $2,296,262 $2,019,139 $2,019,612 $2,364,712 $2,314,935 $1,831,766 $1,539,242 $1,339,788 $1,135,014 $797,149 $797,149 $797,149 $668,702 $613,207 $603,708 $556,567 $499,064 $508,522 $446,458 Johns Hopkins 9.06% 7.72% $2,177,000 $2,055,542 $1,714,541 $1,695,150 $1,819,560 $1,825,212 $1,520,793 $1,373,155 $1,156,598 $982,618 $838,220 $740,864 $725,035 $639,308 $561,433 $560,478 $527,209 $508,399 $534,809 $491,543 Case Western Reserve 8.45% 8.31% $1,516,000 $1,441,819 $1,289,274 $1,347,054 $1,401,070 $1,550,600 $1,434,200 $1,328,800 $1,157,600 $995,700 $620,929 $557,100 $551,300 $499,301 $442,722 $421,820 $381,075 $331,183 $341,160 $307,250
Excluding University of California and Texas System
These figures should not be in the list. Instead, it should be broken down into individual institutions such as UT or Berkley, however, having them all compiled together just seems a bit strange. Thanks.--Cornell010 00:18, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Cornell
In the list of endowments per student, Cornell's value is way out of place with the rest of the list. I hope someone with the proper resources can straighten this out. Matchups 15:58, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
The user at 71.225.68.223 appears to be a frequent (albeit controversial) contributor and recented edited the endowment figure without reordering the list. That number appears to be correct given Cornell's website
All significant universities run a total portfolio -- generally called something like the long term portfolio -- and an endowment. The long term portfolio usually includes the working capital fund. Cornell may indeed have $5bn in aggregate (both illiquid and liquid assets) but the amount specified as endowment is probably smaller than that total. The poster who keeps updating the figure to $5Bn is probably acting in the belief that the total portfolio is the amount that should be specified as endowment. This is generally not the case: a university of the scale of Cornell will easily have $1Bn in short-term/liquid assets for management of both the yearly budget and the yearly capital budget. Using the June 30 fiscal cutoff used by most universities (as reported by NACUBO et.al.) is important for precisely this reason: it allows comparability as to what is actually designated as endowment and allows that designation to be made on a comparable cutoff basis. The poster of the $5bn figure should wait until roughly October month-end, when the June cutoff figures are generally announced (generally first by Bloomberg, then later (Jan of following year) by NACUBO). 66.65.76.15 22:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Whoa -- is this an indictment of the methodology used for endowment calculations on this page to date? Must all of the numbers be vetted for both long-term and short-term capital inclusion, not just Cornell's? Not being in finance, this is outside my realm of expertise - I thought it was a much simpler number. User:silver442n 3:12, 6 September 2006 UTC
On the contrary, my point is that both Bloomberg and NACUBO post: 1) a correct cutoff (typically 6/30/200X); 2) the cutoff used does not respect interim quarterly reporting of the sort used relative to the Cornell figure (which I consider to be inconsistent thereby); 3) the Long-term portolio versus endowment distinction is respected by the two organization, and I'm speculating (<== emphasis added), that in the Cornell case, the poster may be legitimately confused by a distinction that is well understood in the "industry" and by the reportage thereon, but not by the poster. In sum: 1) the usual June cutoff should be used; 2) interim reporting should not be used; 3) long-term portfolios should not be used; 4) "endowment" or "permanent endowment" is what is generally used and reported; 5) working capital and capital-budget funds enter into bond ratings, but should not be reported as endowment. Finally, the figures reported on this page are authoritative in that they are consistent with NACUBO. Hope the above helps. 66.65.76.15 22:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I fixed the tables to reflect Cornell's 2005 NACUBO statistics. I may be "controversial", but all I want is accuracy. I understand that 40K tuition a year for four years (160K+) breeds rabid alumni who are trying to justify the expense in their tortured souls; but wikipedia is an encyclopedia of sorts, and we should try to provide readers with accurate data from as neutral a point of view as is humanly possible.
(same person as above) I want to add that I would be hugely honored if my children get accepted to Cornell and attend. But so many people use wikipedia as a source of reference that we have an obligation to provide accurate information from a neutral point of view.
It seems like time to submit this to RfA, but I don't have enough experience with this to want to be comfortable doing it myself. I'll try, though, if nobody else steps up to the plate in the near future. Also, IMHO, "vandalism" is a change to a page that the poster does not believe to be an improvement. The term should not be used to refer to a change made in good faith just because someone else (or even 99% of the world) considers it an error. Matchups 15:41, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
What is the term for when a user continually reverts against the concensus, and offers no argument?
New Endowment Numbers Coming
In early October, a complete set of new endowment numbers come from Bloomberg, CrainsNY, and other reliable sources. Harvard's recent release is just the tip of an iceberg. Loyal alumni from many schools will be inserting these values and altering ranks. Should we use the new numbers, or stay with strict NACUBO? I am partial to accepting a new ranking if the source is solidly reliable (i.e. Bloomberg), but let's discuss before we're overwhelmed with haphazard edits. Thanks in advance for the input.
In my opinion, Bloomberg is acceptable. Bloomberg usually reports at the end of October As a general rule, regental acceptance of numbers usually occurs in the third week of the month following 3rd quarter confirmation of figures from less liquid investments such as Private Equity and Venture Capital. Thus, September is used as the cutoff for the preceding June 30th figures, confirmed in September, and accepted by college/university as of October. As a result, the end of October is typical. NACUBO is authoritative, but typically is part of a larger survey released in January of the following year. It is unlikely that Bloomberg will have a material error, so October should be fine. 66.65.76.15 01:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Texas and Columbia Endowments
The document that says 15.5B is the sum of UT and A&M, so the entire sum cannot be attributed to UT. So we should hold off on the UT 2006 number.
The texas pool is generally committed 2/3 to UT and 1/3 to A&M. As stated above, the NACUBO figure (roughly January publication date) should be used. In the alternative, the Bloomberg figure may come out sooner (before year end?) and might be used for the top 25 or so schools.Wolvve85 20:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
The external auditors Columbia hired to make their 2006 financial statement make no mention to 5.94 billion. Instead, they state 6.097 billion for the year ending 6/2006. A financial report should have definitive numbers, so I think we should use this number.
Does anybody disagree?
The figure that you cite, as noted above in the Cornell article, may or may not be endowment, and may or may not be Columbia's total investment program. All schools run this distinction in the background, and only the Bloomberg or NACUBO figure (NACUBO is "official") should be used for true comparability.Wolvve85 20:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Value of all university investments is not the same as value of endowment
The Columbia newspaper reported the value of the endowment (5.94B) which is what we are using to compare schools on this list. The value of all Columbia University investments is higher because it includes investments not considered part of the endowment. Many universities have this situation.
Page 14 of the Controller's document lists all the university investments. However, the bottom 3 items are not considered part of the endowment. If you subtract these from the 6.284B total, you end up with 5.94B. Columbia gets the benefits of this extra money, but it does not count towards the endowment.
- Good to know. I didn't see the 5.94 and did not realize it was a derived value. Thanks!
This is precisely the point made at length in the section called "Cornell", just above.Wolvve85 19:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Comparison of endowments to GDP
Is it fair to compare endowments (which I believe are similar to net worth, savings, or some non-annual figure) to an annual figure like GDP? Wouldn't that be like saying someone who owned a $100,000 house was in a similar financial situation to someone making $100,000/year? (This comparison is done at the beginning of the article.) Steve3003 23:33, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
You are correct: endowment is a "stock" and GDP is a "flow". The comparison is, to say the least, moronic. Generally, endowments spend between 3.5% and 5% of a rolling 3 year average of their endowment. Thus, on a stock of X, the flow is usually (roughly) X * 4%. Using the comparison in the article, any endowment of X throws off an annual flow equal to 1/25 of that X, which is more closely comparable to GDP. Wolvve85 20:00, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'm removing the several sentences that reference GDP. They're there only to "provide a sense of the scale" of these endowments, and they do so incorrectly. I'm unsure of what it would make sense to compare universities' endowments with, because such comparisons to unrelated entities can be biased. For example, these endowments can sound small when compared with the net worth of several billionaires. Steve3003 01:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Bloomberg Using NACUBO as of 12/4/06
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2yzjDFci6_8&refer=home —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wolvve85 (talk • contribs) 16:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC).
Three or four of the figures look suspect relative to last year's levels...in particular the one for Notre Dame. I've alerted Bloomberg, but "we" may have to wait until January for the official NACUBO figures.Wolvve85 20:44, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Other Educational Institutions
Shouldn't other non-college-level educational institutions be included in this list? There are many which are, in some ways, equally important as those included in the list. There's a considerable number of mostly private schools that'd make the cut, namely Kamehameha Schools, with an endowment of $6.8 Billion, placing it at number seven.