List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment
colleges and universities in the United States
Many colleges and universities in the United States maintain a financial endowment consisting of assets that are invested in financial securities, real estate, and other instruments. The investment yields a return that funds a portion of an institution's operational expenses while the principal exists in perpetuity. U.S. colleges and universities maintain some of the largest endowments in the world and make up the vast majority of higher education institutions with endowments greater than $1 billion.
The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) maintains information on endowments at U.S. higher education institutions by fiscal year (FY). As of FY2024, the total endowment market value of U.S. institutions stood at $837.720 billion, with an average across all institutions of $1.322 billion and a median of $244.426 million.
There exists significant disparity in endowment income among US universities. One fifth of institutions own four fifths of the endowment wealth, while the bottom 20% of institutions own about 1%.
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 of these foundations include The Duke Endowment, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, and the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust.
Taxes
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.
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This entry incorporates text from “List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.