Sure they did:
In 1989
and in 1988
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It appears, from the above, that, at a minimum, U.S. News considered endowment income for its rankings. I stand corrected. Thanks for searching for and providing the source.
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In all fairness, I agree with your larger point, that a college in the top 30 or 40 of the USNews rankings would probably not be there unless it was pretty well-off financially.
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I note there are also many different forms of institutional wealth and financial resources besides endowments.
Like, some very esteemed institutions don’t necessarily have the highest endowments, but they have a ton of wealth in the form of prime property locations in expensive cities. Sometimes that is monetizable, but it also just de facto part of the competitive marketing.
Net medical revenues and/or research can also be a HUGE source of operating revenues for some institutions.
Like Hopkins only has an endowment per capita of about $291K per that chart, just good for #86. But it is also far and away the largest recipient of research revenues–a total of $4.8 Billion in FY2024. In comparison, Princeton is easily #1 in endowment per capita, but only had about $0.46 Billion in research revenues (so less than 1/10th of Hopkins).
Again, how all this translated to financial aid budgets is very complicated. But I wanted to underscore that different wealthy institutions can be wealthy in remarkably different ways.
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Endowments are not just used for financial aid and merit. They are also used for operating expenses, and when endowments are decimated by the market, some schools have difficulty recovering.
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So much good information! It’s also interesting to look at the financial health because nobody wants their kid to start in a school only to have it closed halfway through their time.
There seems to be a pretty big correlation between endowment size and selectivity of a school. Single digit acceptance rates among the top on the list of endowment per capita. I suppose tracks. If those schools are need blind and Meeting 100% of need, it only would make sense that they also are highly selective because they probably get a ton of qualified applicants.
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Yes, and at essentially the same price point, they can offer more opportunities, resources,and frills - which are attractive to applicants as well.
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Yes and no - plenty of “wealthy” schools have huge full pay bases…i.e. they are wealthy kids schools.
So in some cases yes, but not all.
Unless you are applying to non-name brand schools, I wouldn’t worry too much about this topic as you’ve raised it - because there are many schools without huge endowments still piling out big $$ and they will be here long after your student graduates.
The proper thing to do is have a budget and find solid schools that will or at least could meet that budget. I, for one, would not look at endowments as a reason to or not to apply.
Good luck.
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Institutional wealth definitely can be used to buy nice things that attract a lot of competitive applicants.
But I would just emphasize there are different forms of institutional wealth besides just endowments.
I noted Hopkins as an example above where, among other things, research grants play a huge role, while it is only #94 by endowment per student.
To offer another example, Columbia is at #58. I think Columbia is a good example of where locational value is playing a large role in its competitive fundamentals, although they also have plenty of resources for academic purposes too.
Indeed, back in the day Columbia notoriously had far less square footage per student than any of its Ivy peers, like half as much as Harvard (the next lowest). But Columbia is ultimately planning to put something like over $6 billion into their new Manhattanville campus by 2030 (I’m not sure what they have spent so far, but it is a lot).
That won’t get booked as an endowment investment, but it is definitely the type of investment they expect to help them stay competitive for many years. And that is a good illustration of how new facilities in a city as expensive as New York can be a competitive asset, and therefore a critical form of institutional wealth, despite not being part of the endowment.
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Interesting question about what it means to be a “wealthy college”. Is it as @tsbna44 says, because a lot of wealthy kids attend, or is it because there’s a secret sauce that somehow allows it to deliver a rich experience? I would argue that if the college’s endowment or its immediate environment - or, in the case of JHU - its lines of research, allow it to curate a class that is perfectly crafted to its liking, year after year, from thousands of applications, its students have to be the main ingredient. And that’s not a frill, that’s more like the college’s DNA.
Two examples of top 30 endowment by student schools - Duke (data is 21/22 as it’s the latest CDs I could find) - 37% of first years got need aid. Other schools like Vandy, just over half get aid. At #29 WashU, only 43% get need aid. Part of that likely is they were need aware til recently but even need blind schools play the game - two years ago(WUSTL omitted ED info in the last CDS) - of a tad over 1800 enrolled, nearly 1100 came ED. Or 60%. The wealthy apply ED. Schools can say they are need blind but that over half a class comes Ed, including some Ivies, they know the big chunk of those ED apps are coming from the wealthy…
Even at Harvard, more than 40% are full pay if I’m reading the CDS properly.
Bottom line - there’s many ways colleges skin this cat. Some beneficially to many but in most, if not all cases, beneficial to their institutional priorities and to attracting full pay.
Not sure I’m understanding your point. Are you saying rich kids are less qualified than kids who need financial aid?
No I’m simply saying even need blind schools and those with large endowments have their methods to find the wealthy, or maybe the wealthy find them.
Honestly not sure what OP is seeking to learn though.
Well, yeah. For many, many, many years it was the USNews annual rankings. Even when they stopped using endowments/income per student as a direct metric, they continued to aggressively market the same schools every year in ways that correlated with need-blind FA and large endowments. It’s no wonder the OP is raising the question even though it has migrated a bit into the realm of “What makes a college wealthy?”.
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There is a model of higher education institutions that basically treats them as multi-sided network providers. You have different sorts of overlapping entities trying to connect. Professors and students, students and other students, professors and other professors, grant providers and researchers, graduating students and alums, donors and all sorts of people, and so on. The institution’s role is to help them find each other and meaningfully interact.
The way networks function, the value of a network to any given individual is dependent on who else is also using the network. So in this model, all those users of the network are indeed contributing to the value of the network. So, desired students, say, will attract more such students, and desired professors, and desired donors, and so on. And vice-versa. Lots of mutual-reinforcement effects can happen in successful networks.
OK, then in this model something like an endowment is just a mechanism of connection, donors connecting to whomever they seek to benefit with the help of the institution’s network.
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Historically, a number of schools with big endowments have enhanced their financial aid schemes (no tuition for students with a family income under $x) as an attempt to beat back legislation regarding the taxation of their investment income. A tax was imposed as part of the TCJA of 2017. It wouldn’t surprise me to see some expansion of that endowment tax by this new Congress as part of the 2017 TCJA extension process.
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That’s an assumption. I don’t think it’s a correct assumption. Many, many schools are increasing their financial aid, and even public schools are offering free tuition to students under certain income levels. This is happening due to pressure in the marketplace, not due to political influence.
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