Elite Private Schools Boast College-Size Endowments

The average endowment per student, adjusted for inflation, has increased by 93.5 percent at the nation’s private schools in the past 10 years, even though enrollments have grown by only 11.6 percent, reports The New York Times.

As a growing number of endowments at the nation’s largest schools have ballooned, trustees have begun to hire full-time money managers. The older, better-known schools generally have the largest endowments. The endowment at Phillips Exeter, the nation’s third-oldest school, exceeded $1-billion last year, fueled by donations from wealthy alumni and its own lucrative investments, up from just over $500-million in 2002.

Fund raisers at both day and boarding schools agree that graduates feel more loyalty toward their secondary schools than to their colleges and are therefore generous donors. “I always tell people I was educated at Exeter and went to Yale,” said James H. Ottaway Jr., a former board member of Dow Jones & Company, whose most recent gift to the school was $10-million for its scholarship fund.

To see more about the endowments of private schools and other nonprofit organizations, view the results of The Chronicle’s annual endowment survey.

(Free registration is required to view the Times article, and a paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view the Chronicle article.)