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<p>As bclintonk said, endowment per student is just as misleading - if not more so - than total endowment. A small school with a high endowment/student number could have a very small absolute endowment, with little power to take on large-scale building/research/faculty recruitment projects, etc. It’s also more likely to have a lower debt rating than the much larger endowments overseen by large professional mangement teams, which makes it that much harder to take on large endeavors. One can play up endowment/student all they want, but looking at the resources of the universities with the largest endowments - per student endowment means little in terms of the ability to compete for resources like top faculty, research centers, state of the art buildings, libraries, etc.</p>