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<p>This has been debunked a number of times. Endowment per student does not make sense and is used more by those who don’t understand how endowments work. For one, most of the endowment is restricted for specific purposes, in specific funds, most of which undergrads will never see. Just having the money does not mean that any money is being spent on the undergrads. For another, only a tiny portion of the endowment is spent each year, and it varies by college how much they rely on the endowment. Finally, and most importantly, most revenue–what gets spent on students–doesn’t come from the endowment! There are many sources of revenue, and all of these combine to support the students. Stanford’s annual budget is roughly $4 billion dollars. Granted, much of that is devoted to things only tangentially related to undergrads, but if we’re going to look at useless numbers, why not look at the actual spending of the university?</p>
<p>Simply having more undergrads does not mean that they are prioritized. The grad:undergrad ratio at Berkeley is 2.5:1 but you don’t think they have a better undergraduate experience, do you? Princeton’s “history” by the way has emphasized graduate education. Why do you think Princeton does so well in the NRC rankings? It emphasizes graduate education as well. So does Stanford. Neither gives you a better undergraduate experience, and it’s Princeton fans who keep trying to promote that so that they can maintain some semblance of competitiveness with HYSM (all of which P loses to in cross-admits).</p>
<p>japanoko, that graduate number you’re using from the CDS includes all the people who are enrolled in courses, including those who are enrolled through the Stanford Center for Professional Development in distance learning courses for professionals (the classes they “attend” are videos of the lectures). It doesn’t make sense to include them in the figure of graduate students, because they don’t cost the school any resources (and in fact, contribute lots of $$ to enroll in a course).</p>
<p>I’ve just realized something japanoko–are you aware that when you use all caps and bold text, it sounds to other users that you are screaming at the top of your lungs? Kind of an over-the-top response to a simple claim that you were using an erroneous figure for graduate students.</p>
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<p>It’s hard to understand why you viciously attack others over simple claims of local climate and student body size! Yet you do…</p>