Many institutions of higher education in the United States maintain

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s—sums of money that are invested in

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returns Return may refer to: In business, economics, and finance * Return on investment (ROI), the financial gain after an expense. * Rate of return, the financial term for the profit or loss derived from an investment * Tax return, a blank document or t ...

that fund a portion of an institution's operational expenses and help ensure it survives in perpetuity. U.S. colleges and universities maintain some of the largest endowments in the world, and make up the strong majority of educational institutions with endowments greater than $1 billion. The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) maintains information on college endowments. In 2005, the endowment table totaled $219.37 billion. By 2015, the table totaled $394.96 billion, an increase of 80%, and in 2018, the total further increased to $479.23 billion. , the total stood at $854.11 billion, with an average across all institutions of $1.1621 billion and median of $2.0102 million. Strong returns in fiscal year 2020-21 led the largest university endowments to soar. The four largest endowments —

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, Yale,

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

, and Princeton — increased in value from $127.24 billion to $171 billion in a single year.

Enhancements and levies

The tabulated data below are from NACUBO. Some universities benefit from endowments that are not under their direct control but which are nonetheless dedicated to the welfare of one or several institutions. Examples include The Duke Endowment, the

Robert A. Welch Foundation The Welch Foundation, based in Houston, Texas, is one of the United States' oldest and largest private funding sources for chemistry researchers. It is a non-profit organization named for Robert Alonzo Welch, an industrialist who provided the funds ...

, and the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust. In 2017, a federal endowment tax was enacted in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 in the form of an excise tax of 1.4% on institutions that have at least 500 tuition-paying students and net assets of at least $500,000 per student. The $500,000 is not adjusted for inflation, so the threshold is effectively lowered over time. The endowment tax provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been criticized as funding tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy at the expense of education. Critics note that the tax could threaten financial aid for low-income students, stifle social mobility, and obstruct life-saving research. There continue to be vigorous efforts that advocate the repeal of the tax. Repeal legislation with bipartisan cosponsorship was introduced, but not passed, by both the

115th United States Congress The 115th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States of America federal government, composed of the United States Senate, Senate and the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives. ...

and

116th United States Congress The 116th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives. It convened in Washington, D.C., on January 3, 2019, and ended on Januar ...

Endowments greater than $1 billion

Private schools

Yale Law School in the Sterling Law Building

Public schools

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Endowments per student greater than $2 million

References

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Endowment Endowment most often refers to: *A term for human penis size It may also refer to: Finance *Financial endowment, pertaining to funds or property donated to institutions or individuals (e.g., college endowment) *Endowment mortgage, a mortgage to b ...