Colleges and Universities are Pretty Well Endowed!

The latest endowment numbers for the end of 2014 are in for all colleges, and it looks like everybody had a good year due to booming investment markets. Leading the pack as always is Harvard at almost $36 billion, up about $3.5 billion from last year. That means its endowment increased in value about the current total endowment of Ohio State or Johns Hopkins. If we look at local universities, Washington University saw a nice 17.5% increase to jump from $5.65 to $6.64 billion to remain the 17th wealthiest college endowment in the country. That means it increased in value about one billion dollars or a "SLU-worth", as Saint Louis University saw its endowment pop back up over the $1 billion point (#87 on the list), which it had not seen since before the market crash several years back. Another local university who saw a hefty increase was Lindenwood, who increased 17.4% to jump from $122 million to $143 million to have the 372nd highest endowment in the USA.

All these numbers are quite relative, however, as my graphic equation above illustrates. Wash U. might think their endowment is only one fifth of Harvard's so they still see room for improvement since they are only the 17th wealthiest school in the country. However, their endowment is more than six times that of nearby SLU, who only has a measly billion invested. So SLU's endowment is only 1/35 of Harvard's, which seems small until you realize it is still one of the largest 100 endowments in the country and is much higher than many state universities with many more students. Lindenwood's $143 million also looks tiny in comparison (0.4% of Harvard's endowment), until you realize it has more than Missouri State ($76 million), U. Central Missouri ($37 million) and Northwest Missouri State ($23 million) combined.

After looking at the lengthy list on the Chronicle's site, I decided to make my own. Using a simple copy and paste technique I created a full Excel spreadsheet of the 851 schools from their table. I noticed that they included a bunch from Canada and also ones from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. I then converted that into a handy, dandy web page, since that is what I do for fun! So now you can grab a list just of your state (or nearby states) to see how they are doing.


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