Looking back at the beginning post, it makes it sound like UT Austin (and A&M College Station) only get their per capita share of the money flowing from the Permanent Fund. It doesn’t work that way. The UT System gets gets 2/3rd of the fund, which is about $20B. Out of that, only UT Austin receives “Excellence” funding, which cannot be less than 45% of the total. It can be more than that. So at a minimum, UT Austin gets 30% of the overall total, which is about $6B. Out of that total, just like in other endowments, a percentage, typically about 5%, is made available each year.
However, UT Austin can also get additional amounts allocated. For example, it gets an additional $25M per year extra to support its new Dell Medical School. That is the equivalent payout from an additional $500M endowment. The remainder of the PUF is also used to pay for bonds, and UT Austin shares in this along with the other institutions. By enrollment, UT Austin is about 20% of the UT System, so that share could be estimated at about $1.4B.
So all total, PUF endowment calculated for UT Austin would be about $7.9B (but possibly more). Add to that UT Austin’s separate endowments of about $3.6B and you get about $11.5B for 2017. While all endowments can fluctuate with returns, UT Austin’s effective endowment can also change with how much the System allocates to it. This does not include operating funds, also managed by UTIMCO, which a number of institutions include in their endowment totals as “quasi-endowments”.