Not sure if I subscribe to your analogy. Yale Law School, has a endowment of a little over a billion dollars and has less than 700 students. So, while it is certainly one of the most prestigious law schools in the world, does the largess of its endowment create a sufficient causation to say that’s the reason?
+Qwety568 Even if Cambridge and oxford are public institutions it’s not enough to excuse a small. For instance the university of Michigan has an endowment over $10 billion while Cambridge has an endowment of $9.01 billion. They’re both public schools why is it that Michigan manages to grow a bigger endowment fund?
@boolaHI that makes it a great post grad school but trinity college is both undergrad and postgrad. Plus trinity college has more Nobel laureate affiliates and more notable alumni.
@Ali1302 - I suppose when you say ‘ivies’ endowment growth of $2-$3 billion a year, you mean Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. That’s not even true of course, because an endowment can gain or lose a lot in one year. In fact Harvard reached $36.6B in 2008 and totaled only $35.9B last year. I believe it was the only university endowment in the top 50 that did not reach a new high after 2008. When the numbers come out soon for this year, then I am sure Harvard will reach a new high.
It’s been said by a couple of others that you are comparing apples to oranges when you compare HYP endowments to those of Oxford and Cambridge. I’m not sure why insist on continuing.
@GrudeMonk Cambridge and Oxford have a long term ambition of reaching HYPs endowment funds. If Cambridge and Oxford grow at a low rate between $450 million to $918 million it’s gonna be tough to keep up. Plus how does a public school like Michigan get a $10 billion that is better than most us private schools, Cambridge at the moment has only reached $9 billion.
Because public institutions in other countries are going to operate differently than public institutions in this one. Again, your argument doesn’t make sense because you literally cannot compare this aspect of British and American schools. The economic system of the UK doesn’t diminish the quality of Oxbridge but it completely changes the situation of endowment. Something tells me that someone that cannot understand this, especially after commentators have repeatedly touched upon it, doesn’t need to worry about the respective quality of Oxbridge or Harvard anyway, considering their admittance to those schools would be extremely unlikely.
@Qwerty568 Still that isn’t an excuse for a less well known public school like Michigan to manage to grow a larger endowment than Oxford and Cambridge. I understand how the government could restrict such growth but both Oxford and Cambridge should find a way around it. Right now both universities priority is to increase philanthropic income from students and in general increase it’s donor population and reach lots of alumni/students. Cambridge and Oxford have ambition to match HYPs endowment fund which right now is a big challenge. It seems that it’s easier to raise money in the us compared to the UK and students/alumni in the us tend to be more generous. I guess it’s just a cultural difference were us students value their education more or it could be that European institutions are horrible at fundraising.
You think they should “find a way around it”? I think if I rolled my eyes any harder they might pop out of my skull.
Clearly, you’re not getting it, so I’ll stop trying to explain.
Look, on the world stage, HYPSM is extended to HYPSMCO – regardless of endowments.
In the US, we believe (generally) in lower taxes/less government/more economic liberty than Canada and much of western Europe, and (obviously) Communist states like Venezuela and North Korea. That means we don’t coerce every taxpayer to pay for other people’s kids’ college educations. That, in turn, means that colleges need to be richer themselves to afford to give out a lot of financial aid, without the help of the feds. This is partly how we end up with per-student privately funded endowments of over a million dollars at so many top schools, and over $100K per student at a great many schools.
I wonder, regarding that roughly $1.5 million-per-student endowment at Trinity College of Cambridge: is that all privately funded?
Much of the endowment of Oxbridge colleges is from historic gifts and bequests (which is also why a high proportion is in property (real estate in US parlance)), although they are indeed trying to encourage donations. Additional income comes from grants for research.
OP’s comment here: “A huge endowment gives institutions a great deal of freedom and money to spend on different needs.Institutions with sizable endowments can attract the very best students and professors and also give more generous financial aid packages. Cambridge and Oxford want to compete with the very best us institutions therefore wants to emulate their huge endowment size. It’s basically a mines bigger than yours competition, I just want to know how Oxford and Cambridge are faring amongst the very best in the us.”
As others have said, you’re not comparing like with like. In the UK all domestic students pay the same fees, and all get government backed loans to pay them. They pay no more at Oxford/Cambridge than at the vast majority of oter UK universities. People don’t want to there because of the cost. Alumni now aged mid 40s and up, who might be at a stage in life when they can afford to donate, would not have pad any fees at all. Even now, there is no need for differential financial aid in the US sense (although the Oxbridge colleges do offer a few scholarships and bursaries).
Fo info: there’s an article on the recent development of the Trinity endowment here : http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-02-14/cambridge-college-trinity-hall-buys-a-bank
Wow! I never knew Oxford didn’t even make in the top 10! You’ve really done your research. I mean who would’ve thought right? England is a renowned country and Oxford is one of the most famous schools in the world. I’m still in awe
@HumphyDumpy Oxford is still rich by us standards and makes the top 12 however it turns out us schools are better at fundraising in general. Oxford still has a chance of keeping up it just needs to raise a lot of money faster which is a challenge for a university located in england as the UK doesn’t have a donor culture.
@prezbucky I’m not sure if it’s publicly funded, I wouldn’t think the government would contribute anything to trinity colleges endowment fund. I would think the vast majority of the endowment is privately funded. There are only 5 of the 31 colleges that make up the University of Cambridge that have $1 million per student endowments. Also note the university has a central endowment fund of $3.5 billion which isn’t part of the colleges. So there are some super rich,middle class and poor colleges that make up the University of Cambridge.
Since Oxford & Cambridge have had a 700 year head start on fundraising, their endowments are embarrassingly small.
@Conformist1688 Tuition fees really are irrelevant here. Even if Oxford and Cambridge had $60,000 tuition fees that doesn’t really lead to a huge endowment. What both universities need to focus on is fundraising and philanthropic income in general. Recently Cambridge raised $1.85 billion in 3.5 years from us styled fundraising, now the universities is aiming to raise more money in less time. The university wants to raise $3 billion from both domestic and international donors. Here is an article that shows the universities ambitions to grow:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge-University-sets-sights-2-billion/story-27544070-detail/story.html
@GMTplus7 Harvard and Yale grew their endowment funds in the last 35 years. It’s not like they’ve been doing this for ever. It’s really the last 50 years which us universities have raised real money. Neither Oxbridge nor HYPS have been raising money for hundreds of years. University fundraising is a pretty recent phenomenon, it seems that the us has a better donor culture since only 10% of Oxbridge students donate.
You are right that there is a very big cultural difference, but it’s not that US students value their education more. The UK simply has no tradition of donating to your alma mater, and asking for money was simply not done. The rich colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are rich because largely through bequests of property in their foundation eras (for example, St Johns in Oxford owns a stretch of property that runs all the way from Oxford to Cambridge).
I’m not sure why you see a ‘small’ endowment as something that needs excusing. Until very recently, Oxford and Cambridge had no trouble attracting the very best from around the world to both work and study, because they were Oxford and Cambridge and are reckoned amongst the best in the world- in name terms, Oxford and Harvard would be generally reckoned to be tops, with Cambridge and Yale the merest hair behind. Since about the 1980’s, however, ‘star’ professors in the US have become a lot more expensive, and that trend has spread beyond the US. The UK government won’t pay ‘star’ salaries. So the universities started looking for ways to finance that.
Oxford and Cambridge have recently discovered the notion of alum giving and are rank beginners at the sport. University of Michigan, with it’s top-10 football team, is a pro at it. With absolutely no disrespect to Michigan in no world is it considered on an academic par with Oxford or Cambridge.
@Ali1302 you say “Tuition fees really are irrelevant here. Even if Oxford and Cambridge had $60,000 tuition fees that doesn’t really lead to a huge endowment.”
I would argue that tuition fees are relevant to the general argument insofar as one of the reasons US universities rely on their endowments is so that they can reduce fees (via financial aid) for students who could not otherwise attend. At least for domestic students, that doesn’t apply for Oxbridge. In addition, it plays into the lack of a donor tradition among alumni.
Endowments are a means ta an end - not the purpose of the university.
@collegemom3717, public American unis, who for the longest time were generously funded by their state, certainly did not fund-raise as vigorously as American privates in the past. It is true that UMich, due in part to the slow-motion implosion of the Detroit auto industry, was one of the first publics to see the writing on the wall and start emulating the practices of elite American privates, so these days, while the state of MI contributes only something like 5% of UMich’s budget (many other American publics don’t get much more), they do have a decent-sized endowment to fall back on.
As for being on academic par with Oxbridge, I would say it would depend on what you are comparing. If you are talking about the undergraduate degree, I agree with you, but in certain other respects (for instance, if you are talking about the MBA program or engineering), UMich surpasses Oxbridge.
@PurpleTitan, definitely agree on MBAs! don’t know enough about engineering, but it seems intuitively sensible. The turn to private sources for money was certainly faster in the US, where there was both the tradition of alum giving and the sports element.
Switching from UK unis to University of Kentucky, the dynamic between whoever is president of UK and the basketball coach has materially affected many aspects of UK admin decisions. No university in the UK has anything like the financial factor of the US universities with powerhouse teams.