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University Endowments Show Disparity In Prosperity

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The Associated Press

Published: January 24, 2008

New figures on university endowments confirm it's not just the "haves" and "have nots" in academe these days. Beyond the great majority of colleges, there's a growing group of the newly rich schools, and - at the top of the heap - a tiny cadre of ultra-wealthy institutions.

The latest endowment figures from NACUBO, a college business officers' group, highlight the growing prosperity but also the stratification among elite universities.

There are 76 colleges and universities with endowments that have passed $1 billion - including 16 new members of that club such as Georgetown and the Universities of Oklahoma and Missouri.

But five at the top each has nearly $6 billion more than any school outside that group: Harvard ($35.6 billion), Yale ($22.5 billion), Stanford ($17.2 billion), Princeton ($15.8 billion) and the University of Texas system ($15.6 billion). The survey marks the end of the most recent fiscal year, which at most schools is June 30.

Harvard's endowment expanded by an amount last year that's more than Ivy League rival Cornell has altogether. Princeton now has more than $2 million in the bank for every student. Stanford raised nearly $1 billion during its last reported fiscal year alone.

There is a "tremendous dispersion in wealth from the people right at the top to the lesser ones," said Ronald Ehrenberg, an expert on higher education economics at Cornell. "It falls off very, very quickly."

There's also rising resentment in higher education over faculty raiding, with wealthier colleges offering salaries that poorer schools can't match.

It's not just the very richest schools - prosperous public universities raid poorer peers, too. Some argue there's a public benefit when talented scholars gather in one place and collaborate. But there's also a cost when the schools that educate the most people lose their stars. Harvard now pays full professors on average about $177,000, compared with about $106,000 at the average public research university.

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