<p>GoBlue81, I was saying four things: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>endowment fund campaign is more of an activity of private institutions rather than of public institutions. </p></li>
<li><p>public institutions started raising endowment funds much later than the privates have started doing it. In fact, Berkeley, for example, just started raising endowment funds in a vigorous manner only about a few years from ago. </p></li>
<li><p>UMich and UVa are an “outlier” in terms of public universities having huge endowment funds. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>but even so, </p>
<ol>
<li>both UMich and UVa are not really as aggressive as their private counterparts are when it comes to endowment fund campaign in the past many years. I believe both UMich and UVa have started their fund campaign not very long ago or not as early as their private counterparts have. But I recon that if only they have started their fund raising campaign as early as their private counterparts have, their endowment funds, which you said are already large, would have been bigger than what they actually have now. UMich’s endowment fund, for example, would probably make it in the top 4 or 3 list. </li>
</ol>
<p>And for these reasons (and a lot more than I can actually write), you cannot base prestige on the volume of endowment because certain type of schools have different kinds of fund raising activities. The very nature of their existence is different as well, and therefore, it is illogical to use endowment as a basis for prestige.</p>