The National Association of College and University Business Officers and financial services company, TIAA, released a report Thursday detailing how much money many of the nation’s colleges, universities and foundations have in their endowments.
Harvard University has the largest endowment in the nation, at about $39.4 billion.
Endowments are an important sign of a college or university’s financial health. They often draw deep-pocketed donors.
The schools that participated in the study spent, on average, $2 million more from their endowments than they did the prior year, the report found. Nearly one-half of that spending, 49%, went to student financial aid, 17% went to academic programs, 11% to faculty, 7% to campus facilities and the rest to other purposes, the report said.
Here are five interesting things we saw:
Emory University is tops in Georgia. Its endowment was nearly $7.9 billion, which was the 17th highest total in the nation.
Emory was first, by a wide margin. Georgia Tech was second among Georgia schools, with a $2.17 billion endowment.
Private colleges and universities have the big endowments. Fifteen of the 20 largest endowments belong to private schools. Six are Ivy League schools.
The top five endowments in Georgia were: Emory ($7.87 billion), Georgia Tech ($2.17 billion), University of Georgia and related foundations ($1.3 billion), Berry College ($1 billion) and Spelman College ($390 million).
Berry College had the largest per student endowment. It was $535,189 per student.
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