<p>Slipper -- </p>
<p>Just because you can cite those numbers doesn't mean that Cornell is any less undergraduate focused than some of other schools, which was your initial claim. I fail to see the direct correlation. A couple of points to consider:</p>
<p>1) There is a large fixed cost component to student spending, so some economies of scale will naturally be enjoyed. So it's no surprise that Princeton and Dartmouth spend more per student -- they have the smallest student bodies, so spending per student will naturally have to be larger than at the larger schools, like Cornell, Penn, or Harvard.</p>
<p>2) Cornell's endowment per student is not significantly different than Brown or Penn's. I'm not certain how endowment per student is directly related to the undergraduate experience, though, as a lot of endowment is budgeted for things like research funds of professor salaries.</p>
<p>3) After you take into account the revenue that Cornell receives from the state of New York as quasi-endowment money, Cornell's endowment per student numbers become significantly higher than Brown, Columbia, and Penn. In 2007, this difference was around $450k compared to $350k.</p>
<p>4) Ironically, of all these schools, Cornell may actually hurt the less in the coming years as it is less reliant on its endowment funds for funding. Dartmouth supports a full third of its operating revenue from investment income, whereas Cornell supports less than 15 percent with such income. So when all of these endowments have taken a bath, some schools will be hurting more than others.</p>