<p>The point re: economies of scale is especially important, but I’ll add that comparison is even more difficult when you don’t compare the real total “wealth” of universities. The endowment is only a small piece of a university’s spending; AFAIK no university pays for more than half of their budget with endowment funds (I believe Harvard is the highest, at ~40%; at Stanford, it’s 20-25%). You have to consider their other sources of funding, which make up the majority of funding: research funds from the government (which frees up university funds for other purposes), fundraising from donations, royalties from licensed technologies (e.g. the “endowment equivalent” of what MIT or Stanford receive in royalties each year is $1.2b - $1.4b), and tuition, which makes up the bulk of funding at most universities. For public institutions, you also have to take into account state funding.</p>
<p>Once you do that, you can start to look at “financial resources per capita,” but even that’s flawed, because you can’t separate grad/undergrad, and more importantly, you can’t really tell what counts as “student spending” at all. For example, half of Stanford’s $4 billion budget is spent on salaries/benefits for employees; would you consider this “student spending”? How directly does a resource need to be spent on students for it to be considered in such calculations?</p>
<p>So in the end, it makes little sense to even attempt to compare with these metrics, because there’s no “right” way to do it.</p>