Harvard University is the nation's richest college with endowment market value last year of over $49.5 billion, more than the annual gross domestic product of countries like Jordan, Bolivia, and Paraguay, a new ranking shows.
In second place was the University of Texas system, with nearly $45 billion; Yale University held onto third place even though its endowment market value dropped from last year, Market Watch reported.
The ranking of college endowments came from a study of the financial assets of nearly 700 academic institutions that was published Thursday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and the Commonfund Institute.
One expert lamented that the wealth does little to serve most Americans.
"Whether the criticism is coming from the left or the right, there's not a lot of people to stand up and defend the leaders of Ivy League institutions, and I think that's in part because they're not using their endowments to serve most Americans," Charlie Eaton, author of "Bankers in the Ivory Tower, The Troubling Rise of Financiers in U.S. Higher Education," told Market Watch.
Some institutions, like the University of California system, saw their fortunes rise over the last year, with the market value jumping 14.7% to nearly $17.7 billion — and putting it in 10th place on the largest endowment list, bumping the University of Notre Dame.
The rest of the top 10 were Stanford, with over $36 billion; Princeton with about $34 billion; MIT with over $23 billion; the University of Pennsylvania with nearly $21 billion; Texas A&M with over $19 billion; the University of Michigan with nearly $18 billion.
The top nine endowments by market value were unchanged from 2022, the study found.
The findings come at a time in which wealthy, tax-advantaged universities are getting a more critical look over issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion and the Israel-Hamas war — and amid pressure on schools with large endowments to be spending more on making college financially viable for a larger range of students, Market Watch noted.