<p>“While a large endowment is useful for funding the things you mentioned, it does not provide an actual picture of the quality of education offered at various universities. Universities with extensive research options will obviously require larger portions of their endowments to be directed to research, which does not always improve the quality of an undergraduate education. Beyond the first question of where do we direct this money (hiring the best researchers and building labs, hiring excellent lecturers, building a stadium to seat 100,000, etc.) is how effectively the money is used in each area.
(By the way, as a student on one of the universities that made your list of highest per student endowments, I’m not just whining because my university doesn’t come out well in under your ranking system.)”</p>
<p>Actually most research funding comes from outside sources which is why it is so competitive to get. Only a handful of the richest schools spend significant amounts of their own money on research. Outside research funding also has an allowance for overhead costs to fund the rest of the univerisity operations. This can amount to many millions of dollars that the U can spend on other operations–like undergrad education.</p>