Interesting paper on size of endowments and what they signify
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1787372
“We show that a risky and large endowment signals a combination of three university characteristics: low productivity marginal internal projects; self-interested stakeholders resisting productive expansion; or binding constraints on maximum endowment payouts.”
Maybe that is why despite having smaller endowments than some of the richer Universities like Harvard, Yale and Princeton, Oxford, Caltech and Cambridge still hold their own in terms of being premier institutions of higher learning.