US News 2017 rankings

IzzoOne
Sat, 26 Nov 2016 11:34:59 +0000

Alexandre, I don’t really understand your point. Universities operate off of revenue. Endowment distribution and private contributions can be one source of revenue. The others major ones are net tuition and fees, auxiliary enterprises from things like room and board, grants and contracts (including R&D), state appropriations, and at universities with hospitals/health systems, patient services. (Note that patient services is often by far the largest.) Penn is going to get a lot more in grants and contracts and net tuition and fees than UVA. UVA only get 5.2% of total budget from the state (this includes the health services), which is $150M or so. Penn’s research spending alone is nearly $500M a year more than UVA. Research (and a relatively small subsidy from the state) are UVA’s achilles heel, if it has one.

If your point is that UVA can provide as good of an undergraduate education as Penn, I would absolutely agree. Undergraduate education often has more to do with the institution’s commitment than with the resources being discussed above.

The endowments as a measure of wealth can be misleading. Universities with Health Services divisions (that are typically non-profit) often have surpluses and contingency funds that are counted as quasi-endowments in the total. These are often a third or more of the totals you see for university, but they are associated with health services. Beyond that, a lot of the endowment may be focused on graduate schools, athletics, research, etc.