With colleges in the crosshairs with discussions of taxing endowments and cutting incidental money they can take from grants, it is worth knowing how much the wealthy colleges are endowed. The graphs largely speak for themselves.
Wikipedia lists the colleges with at least $1 billion in endowment money. There are 87 private schools and 55 public schools. I split the private college into those above $2 billion, Figure 1, and those between $1 and $2 billion, Figure 2, to make the graphs easier to read.
Harvard has over $50 billion in the bank. To try and put this in some perspective. If you look at the GDP of countries, the 94th and lower-ranked countries (2025 estimate) have a GDP below $50 billion. Poor Yale only beats out the 101st and lower-ranked countries.
Figure 3 provides the list of public colleges with over $1 billion in endowment. A little caution here is that some of these are public systems, such as Texas at the top, and not individual colleges. Still, for example, the University of Michigan would be 7th on the list of private colleges.
Now, hopefully you are saying, “Wait, what about that data rule, you know, Normalize properly; ask, ‘Per what?’” Yeah, the number of students a college has matters. That’s why we have Figure 4, which lists the 23 colleges with over $1 million of endowment per student. To put that in perspective, say it costs $100,000 for room, board, and tuition. Assume no additions to the endowment, and these colleges can run for about 10 years without bringing in an extra dime of tuition, interest on the endowment, or new donation. In reality, 4% is a reasonable draw on the endowment without it shrinking. On $1,000,000, that is $40,000. Break $2,000,000 per student, and simply the draw on the endowment is almost enough to run the place forever. Do, for example, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Harvard, and MIT really need government money?
I don’t think it is unfair for taxpayers to question how much, if at all, they should be supporting some of these very well-off colleges and universities. They pay no taxes, and there are often tensions about this on the local level (they certainly exist in Ithaca, with Cornell University) as an industry that doesn’t pay taxes to pave roads and/or fund K-12 schools. They do often make contributions but typically well below what they would pay if they were taxed like any other industry.
Questions worth asking, for example, should endowments be taxed and used to feed the poor in their home communities? If you are against colleges and universities being taxed somehow, is there some point at which universities have so much money that you would change your mind? Or maybe there should be some profit sharing amongst higher education, like sports leagues, to create some equity?
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I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD Math: Stochastic Processes, MS Applied Statistics, MS Math, BS Math, BS Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks “R for College Mathematics and Statistics” and “Applied Calculus with R.” I welcome any collaborations.