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Endowments amongst P5 schools.

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This is nothing to do with where football programs are. But what it is, is how truly fat cat rich some schools are or......how academic centric schools are. It does show which schools are serious schools and which schools are basically community colleges.

As we can see, Pitt is on the top of the heap. For whatever reason, and part of this is local PSU driven paranoia, but Pitt is every bit as worthy as an academic powerhouse as the best of schools.

Every Power 5 School Ranked by University Endowment Size (including updated conferences and best of the rest)​

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Casual
Source was wikipedia. Interesting list to look at.
SEC
  1. Texas (42.9 Billion)
  2. Texas A&M (18 Billion)
  3. Vanderbilt (10.9 Billion)
  4. Oklahoma (2.7 Billion)
  5. Arkansas (2.6 Billion)
  6. Florida (2.29 Billion)
  7. Kentucky (2.1 Billion)
  8. Georgia (1.8 Billion)
  9. Missouri (1.74 Billion)
  10. Tennessee (1.34 Billion)
  11. Auburn (1 Billion)
  12. South Carolina (989 Million)
  13. Ole Miss (775 Million)
  14. Alabama (820.6 Million)
  15. Mississippi State (698 Million)
  16. LSU (696 Million)
Big 10
  1. Michigan (17 Billion)
  2. Northwestern (16.1 Billion)
  3. USC (8.12 Billion)
  4. UCLA (7.4 Billion)
  5. Ohio State (6.8 Billion)
  6. Minnesota (5.4 Billion)
  7. Michigan State (4.4 Billion)
  8. Wisconsin (4 Billion)
  9. Illinois (3.82 Billion)
  10. Penn State (3.4 Billion)
  11. Indiana (3.32 Billion)
  12. Iowa (3.14 Billion)
  13. Purdue (2.59 Billion)
  14. Rutgers (1.98 Billion)
  15. Nebraska (1.7 Billion)
  16. Maryland (1.1 Billion)
ACC
  1. Virginia (14.5 Billion)
  2. Duke (12.7 Billion)* *Duke is also the primary beneficiary of the Duke Endowment private fund, worth an additional 3.69 Billion
  3. Pitt (5.68 Billion)
  4. UNC (5.16 Billion)
  5. Boston College (3.8 Billion)
  6. Georgia Tech (2.17 Billion)
  7. Syracuse (1.8 Billion)
  8. NC State (1.42 Billion)
  9. Miami (1.39 Billion)
  10. Wake Forest (1.35 Billion)
  11. Virginia Tech (1.34 Billion)
  12. Clemson (1 Billion)
  13. Florida State (897 Million)
  14. Louisville (715 Million)
Big 12
  1. TCU (2.48 Billion)
  2. Kansas (2.2 Billion)
  3. Baylor (2.01 Billion)
  4. BYU (1.97 Billion)
  5. Cincinnati (1.7 Billion)
  6. Texas Tech (1.7 Billion)
  7. Oklahoma State (1.56 Billion)
  8. Iowa State (1.44 Billion)
  9. Houston (1.32 Billion)
  10. West Virginia (611 Million)
  11. Kansas State (524 Million)
  12. UCF (162 Million)
Pac 12
  1. Stanford (37.8 Billion)
  2. Cal (6.8 Billion)
  3. Washington (4.88 Billion)
  4. Colorado (2.13 Billion)
  5. Oregon (1.32 Billion)
  6. Arizona State (1.3 Billion)
  7. Washington State (1.29 Billion)
  8. Arizona (1.2 Billion)
  9. Utah (1.07 Billion)
  10. Oregon State (819 Million)
Potential expansion candidates - SMU (2.11 Billion), San Diego State (353 Million), UNLV (305.8 Million), Fresno State (170.8 Million), Boise State (113.9 Million)
Outside of a P5 conference with endowment over 1 Billion
  1. Notre Dame (18.07 Billion)
  2. Rice (8.06 Billion)
  3. SMU (2.11 Billion)
  4. Tulane (1.92 Billion)
  5. Tulsa (1.37 Billion)
  6. Buffalo (1.02 Billion)
 
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9nationalchampionships said:
Maybe they spend an inordinate amount of their donations? Hard to believe their endowment is not higher.

Calling Paco!
Click to expand...
You either donate to endowed fund or not. Donor usually is well aware if they are giving towards an endowment because it is for smaller support over a long (indefinite) term and not financing immediate (fiscal) year operations One of the only situations I know of where a charity takes general donations intended for general purposes but directs a chunk of it into an endowed fund is the Five Diamonds....who is behind THON.
 
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CrazyPaco said:
You either donate to endowed fund or not. Donor usually is well aware if they are giving towards an endowment because it is for smaller support over a long (indefinite) term and not financing immediate (fiscal) year operations One of the only situations I know of where a charity takes general donations intended for general purposes but directs a chunk of it into an endowed fund that I know the Five Diamonds.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the clarification!
You have to think that O$U takes in substantial donations yearly so maybe they ask these to be donated to the general fund so that can use them more freely.
 
As far as athletics, you have to look at endowed funds specified for athletics. Pitt's athletics-specific endowment is not that big...at all.

As far overall endowment, a better rank is $ per students+staff. And it Pitt's case, you have to include all regional campuses in the total as well. It is good for a "public", but doesn't nearly as impressive in a list of overall rankings. I don't think it is in the top 100 ranking endowment per student.

Endowment size is not unimportant, but WAYYYY over emphasized.
 
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9nationalchampionships said:
Thanks for the clarification!
You have to think that O$U takes in substantial donations yearly so maybe they ask these to be donated to the general fund so that can use them more freely.
Click to expand...
Pitt ranks about 63rd in total annual giving. Ohio State is 22nd. Penn State is 55th.

Pitt has one of the worst alumni giving rates in the ACC.

It's definitely an area where alumni let the university down. Way down.
 
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JD1976 said:
I did not expect to see Pitt’s higher than PSU’s
Click to expand...
I’ve heard over the years that a decent amount of many endowments (Pitt’s included) stems from the university’s medical school. That alone should explain the difference between Penn State and Pitt’s endowments.
 
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CrazyPaco said:
Pitt ranks about 63rd in total annual giving. Ohio State is 22nd. Penn State is 55th.

Pitt has one of the worst alumni giving rates in the ACC.

It's definitely an area where alumni let the university down. Way down.
Click to expand...
In your estimation why are our alums not donating at percentage. My wife and I give but it is not substantial.
 
9nationalchampionships said:
In your estimation why are our alums not donating at percentage. My wife and I give but it is not substantial.
Click to expand...
good question. If I knew the answer, I'd be working in the development office. If you know alumni, encourage them to donate annually, because even a minimum amount counts towards its US New ranking.
pittchagg said:
I’ve heard over the years that a decent amount of many endowments (Pitt’s included) stems from the university’s medical school. That alone should explain the difference between Penn State and Pitt’s endowments.
Click to expand...
That is true, but Penn State's endowment totals also include those stipulated to support its medical school in Hershey.
 
CrazyPaco said:
good question. If I knew the answer, I'd be working in the development office. If you know alumni, encourage them to donate annually, because even a minimum amount counts towards its US New ranking.

That is true, but Penn State's endowment totals also include those stipulated to support its medical school in Hershey.
Click to expand...
For sure, but I’d probably wager that Pitt’s medical school endowment is several orders of magnitude larger than Penn State’s, which is probably most if not all of the difference between the two.
 
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CrazyPaco said:
No. Not a piggy bank.
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Not my point. They have so much money floating around no need for more buildings and other dumb stuff. Start making college affordable again. If f you have an endowment of billions what exactly are you using it for and is ut going directly to student advancement?
 
CrazyPaco said:
Pitt ranks about 63rd in total annual giving. Ohio State is 22nd. Penn State is 55th.

Pitt has one of the worst alumni giving rates in the ACC.

It's definitely an area where alumni let the university down. Way down.
Click to expand...
Obligatory
 
Ivy’s:

Harvard Endowment = 53.2 Billion.

Yale about 42 Billion

Princeton about 37 Billion

At least one other at or over 20 Billion and another close to 15 Billion.

Harvard could afford not to ever charge any tuition.
 
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DC_Area_Panther said:
Ivy’s:

Harvard Endowment = 53.2 Billion.

Yale about 42 Billion

Princeton about 37 Billion

At least one other at or over 20 Billion and another close to 15 Billion.

Harvard could afford not to ever charge any tuition.
Click to expand...
I knew the Ivy League schools were way above most of the others, did not realize Texas was up in that stratosphere as well. I knew they were above most, but not by quite that amount.
 
BFo8 said:
I knew the Ivy League schools were way above most of the others, did not realize Texas was up in that stratosphere as well. I knew they were above most, but not by quite that amount.
Click to expand...
Texas # is enormous. I had to look it up to make sure that was correct and it is. Invested in the Permian Basin. One thing to consider is that the # is for the entire UT system which encompasses 240,000 students. Compare that to the schools with comparable #’s like Stanford and the Ivy’s, those schools only have to worry about themselves. UPenn with the largest endowment in PA and it’s not even close at over 20 Billion.
 
anon_d97v9o3a8b6xr said:
Not my point. They have so much money floating around no need for more buildings and other dumb stuff. Start making college affordable again. If f you have an endowment of billions what exactly are you using it for and is ut going directly to student advancement?
Click to expand...
Yet that is exactly what your point implies.

There are only a handful of schools which have that sort of money: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford...MIT... again, the key to really looking at this is endowment per student, and these schools all plow a ton into financial aid for students that are actually admitted. It is usually cheaper total price to go to those schools than going to Pitt, if you can get in.

The idea that it vanity facility projects that are causing college to be so expensive is a total myth. Facilities are a very small proportion of institutional budgets anywhere.

The major cost is faculty and staff salaries and benefit. At Pitt, that is about 62% of the annual $2.4 billion budget. Facility maintenance and construction is about 4.1%.

Are college professors overpaid then? Well many of them make less or about the same than high school teachers even though they have terminal degrees (like MDs, JDs, or PhDs) and other advance training.

There is the whole issue of higher education costs being so much steeper than normal inflation over the last several decades. Well inflation is based on the cost-of-living consumer price index set primarily on the retail cost of widgets, which for decades have been kept low by outsourcing product and services overseas; the Walmart rollback model. You can't outsource a entirely in-person, service-oriented industry like higher education to Mexico or Vietnam, when the primary service providers have spent 8 to 15 years in school obtaining terminal degrees other post-doctoral training.

When you are an institution in a highly competitive educational space where your reputation and desirability among your target "customer" is the primary driven by the perception of quality in your faculty, you must pay the market rate for people that are, at a place like Pitt, internationally regarded experts in the top echelons of their fields. And these experts are typically taking a pretty sizable income hit to remain in an academic space that affords them academic freedom to continue study in what they are interested in their particular field of expertise.

About half of the Pittsburgh campus faculty and staff are in the 6 schools of the heal sciences so I'll use the case of a tenure-track School of Medicine professor, within the first 5 years of his employment at Pitt, after 12-15+ years of education and training. The average salary of such a professor according to figures from two years ago was $56K, and that would be mostly soft money where the professor is expected to fund most of their own salary through research grants. Get tenure after 5 or so years of successfully obtaining grant funding and publishing where you have established a national reputation in your field...then your salary goes up to an average of $77K. There are no summers off...you are teaching, providing other university service, and running a lab, not too unlike running a small business, 12 months a year.
 
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Eastern Eight said:
Texas # is enormous. I had to look it up to make sure that was correct and it is. Invested in the Permian Basin. One thing to consider is that the # is for the entire UT system which encompasses 240,000 students. Compare that to the schools with comparable #’s like Stanford and the Ivy’s, those schools only have to worry about themselves. UPenn with the largest endowment in PA and it’s not even close at over 20 Billion.
Click to expand...
Texas and Texas A&M endowments include their entire systems. For UT, that includes 8 universities, including the main branch at Austin and UTEP among others. It also includes 6 health care institutions, including MD Anderson and UT-Southwestern, which I think is the largest academic medical center in the nation. So for one, these are huge. systms. FYI, aTm has their own system.

However, the primary reason both UT and aTm have such large endowments is because the state of Texas has plowed money into those endowments. Beginning in 1876, the state set aside more than 1 million acres of Texas land to aid the development of the UT and Texas A&M University systems. The land generates revenue through leases of oil, gas and surface rights. That's why their endowments dwarf other public institutions. That said, when you calculate endowment per student, UT's endowment rank drops to 134th.

In Pitt's history, back at the beginning of the 19th century when Pittsburgh Academy gained university status, the Commonwealth promised land that would be used to fund the university. Political football with the land came into play and it was never received and Pitt struggled financially for the next 100 years. Some states have priorities that have pushed their institutions up a climb of educational and R&D centers, and then there is Pennsylvania that is dead last among the 50 states in funding higher ed research institutions.
 
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CrazyPaco said:
Pitt ranks about 63rd in total annual giving. Ohio State is 22nd. Penn State is 55th.

Pitt has one of the worst alumni giving rates in the ACC.

It's definitely an area where alumni let the university down. Way down.
Click to expand...
Ohio State has long courted it’s alums and treats them well. It takes time to build a culture. It takes one idiot to ruin it.
 
CrazyPaco said:
Yet that is exactly what your point implies.

There are only a handful of schools which have that sort of money: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford...MIT... again, the key to really looking at this is endowment per student, and these schools all plow a ton into financial aid for students that are actually admitted. It is usually cheaper total price to go to those schools than going to Pitt, if you can get in.

The idea that it vanity facility projects that are causing college to be so expensive is a total myth. Facilities are a very small proportion of institutional budgets anywhere.

The major cost is faculty and staff salaries and benefit. At Pitt, that is about 62% of the annual $2.4 billion budget. Facility maintenance and construction is about 4.1%.

Are college professors overpaid then? Well many of them make less or about the same than high school teachers even though they have terminal degrees (like MDs, JDs, or PhDs) and other advance training.

There is the whole issue of higher education costs being so much steeper than normal inflation over the last several decades. Well inflation is based on the cost-of-living consumer price index set primarily on the retail cost of widgets, which for decades have been kept low by outsourcing product and services overseas; the Walmart rollback model. You can't outsource a entirely in-person, service-oriented industry like higher education to Mexico or Vietnam, when the primary service providers have spent 8 to 15 years in school obtaining terminal degrees other post-doctoral training.

When you are an institution in a highly competitive educational space where your reputation and desirability among your target "customer" is the primary driven by the perception of quality in your faculty, you must pay the market rate for people that are, at a place like Pitt, internationally regarded experts in the top echelons of their fields. And these experts are typically taking a pretty sizable income hit to remain in an academic space that affords them academic freedom to continue study in what they are interested in their particular field of expertise.

About half of the Pittsburgh campus faculty and staff are in the 6 schools of the heal sciences so I'll use the case of a tenure-track School of Medicine professor, within the first 5 years of his employment at Pitt, after 12-15+ years of education and training. The average salary of such a professor according to figures from two years ago was $56K, and that would be mostly soft money where the professor is expected to fund most of their own salary through research grants. Get tenure after 5 or so years of successfully obtaining grant funding and publishing where you have established a national reputation in your field...then your salary goes up to an average of $77K. There are no summers off...you are teaching, providing other university service, and running a lab, not too unlike running a small business, 12 months a year.
Click to expand...
I’ll say it again, with so much money floating around, what solution to spend wisely yet make schools affordable. I know professors who are so overpaid it is insane. There are administrative staff making high 6 figures. If schools can raise so much in endowments why not find ways to cut student costs. I mean is an education at a competitive school really worth $250,000 plus for a single student. Is the edu action that great? I don’t see how any of it will be sustainable at the rate it’s going. I know there are grants and scholarships, but come on, so much money floating around no solution to stop raising tuition but reduce it?
 
BTW, here are endowment per student numbers from NACUBO:

1. Rockefeller $11.959m
2. Princeton $4.475m
3. Princeton Theological Seminary $4.325
4. Yale $3.529
5. Curtis Institute of Music $3.529 (first in PA)
6. MIT $2.483
7. Standford $2.442
8. Harvard $2.275
9. Amherst $2.163
10. Williams $2.131
11. Pomona $2.076
12. Swarthmore $2.018
.
16. Notre Dame $1.432
.
.
31. Penn $0.878
.
34. Duke $0.805
.
39. UCSF $0.694 (first public)
.
.
67. Virginia $0.446
.
.
86. Michigan $0.298
.
88. Carnegie Mellon $0.297
.
93. Boston College $0.280
.
.
110. Wake Forest $0.223
.
.
131. UNC-Chapel Hill $0.184
132. Pitt $0.181
133. Allegheny College $0.178
.
.
157. Texas A&M System $0.147
.
.
183. Ohio State $0.111
184. Georgia Tech $0.109
.
.
.
.
.
312. Penn State $0.059
 
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CrazyPaco said:
BTW, here are endowment per student numbers from NACUBO:

1. Rockefeller $11.959m
2. Princeton $4.475m
3. Princeton Theological Seminary $4.325
4. Yale $3.529
5. Curtis Institute of Music $3.529 (first in PA)
6. MIT $2.483
7. Standford $2.442
8. Harvard $2.275
9. Amherst $2.163
10. Williams $2.131
11. Pomona $2.076
12. Swarthmore $2.018
.
16. Notre Dame $1.432
.
.
31. Penn $0.878
.
34. Duke $0.805
.
39. UCSF $0.694 (first public)
.
.
67. Virginia $0.446
.
.
86. Michigan $0.298
.
88. Carnegie Mellon $0.297
.
93. Boston College $0.280
.
.
110. Wake Forest $0.223
.
.
131. UNC-Chapel Hill $0.184
132. Pitt $0.181
133. Allegheny College $0.178
.
.
157. Texas A&M System $0.147
.
.
183. Ohio State $0.111
184. Georgia Tech $0.109
.
.
.
.
.
312. Penn State $0.059
Click to expand...
Is this the average per alum? Not really sure what this is telling us? Dumb it down for us!
 
anon_d97v9o3a8b6xr said:
I’ll say it again, with so much money floating around, what solution to spend wisely yet make schools affordable. I know professors who are so overpaid it is insane. There are administrative staff making high 6 figures. If schools can raise so much in endowments why not find ways to cut student costs. I mean is an education at a competitive school really worth $250,000 plus for a single student. Is the edu action that great? I don’t see how any of it will be sustainable at the rate it’s going. I know there are grants and scholarships, but come on, so much money floating around no solution to stop raising tuition but reduce it?
Click to expand...
If you want to say there are too many administrators, I won't disagree with that, because schools have been forced to hire deans and assistant deans for every social movement. But administrative staffs are a drop in the bucket for overall budget, and they aren't making "high 6 figures". Only university presidents, of major institutions with significant tenure at those schools, are approaching that which is not outside the normal market rate for similar positions of running high profile organizations with multi-billion budgets and thousands of employees. Most administrators aren't hitting $200K. Highest mean salary at Pitt of any unit of the university are for 9 employees in the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Business Operations and the average there is $204K with a median of $139K.

So much money floating around is just not true for the vast majority of institutions.
 
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CrazyPaco said:
This is total endowment per student.

I don't have average per alumni for these schools. Clearly smaller, private schools have smaller alumni bases.
Click to expand...
Yeah, with the smaller enrollment schools, if you get 3-4 huge gifts, it can skew it overall per student average.
 
CrazyPaco said:
Uh huh, and how has Pitt treated its alumni poorly, as that is exactly what you are implying?
Click to expand...
No. Not at all. I didn’t imply anything. I made an observation.
I can expand. For decades Ohio State made tickets available to its alums regardless of whether they had season tickets. One game a year, 2 tickets.
They dropped that about a decade ago because they have too many alums,
Alums also have privileges across all campuses…library, gyms, etc.
If you came to any conclusion about how Pitt treats its alums, that comes from your own insecurities.
 
Is the point of this thread to suggest one of the Big 2 will pick a school for expansion based in its non-athletic endowment???
 
JD1976 said:
I did not expect to see Pitt’s higher than PSU’s
Click to expand...
I did. To me, it demonstrates that Nit alumni would rather throw their money toward sports than academics. To each his own, I guess….

We shouldn’t forget the fact that the Nits produce waaay more alumni than Pitt does.
 
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