PROVIDENCE – Brown University’s investments rose 10 percent in the year ended June 30, beating the 8.9 percent return of Yale University and trailing the 11 percent gain of Harvard University.
The fund was valued at $2.18 billion as of June, Brown said in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg News on Oct. 2. It received gifts of more than $36 million, including $15 million from anonymous donors and $2.99 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in the past year.
ISO 9001:2026: A Practical Opportunity to Build for What’s Next
For Rhode Island manufacturers, ISO 9001 has been much more than a certificate on the…
Learn More
Brown generated an average annual return of 4.6 percent in the five years through June and a 6.2 percent gain over the past decade, compared with the 4.7 percent and 7 percent increases of Harvard, the Cambridge, Mass., school with a $27.4 billion endowment.
Yale, the New Haven, Conn., university with a $16.7 billion endowment, reported the worst performance in the Ivy League, except for Princeton University, which hasn’t announced results.
Pensions, endowments and other institutional funds returned a median of 13 percent in the past year, 3.1 percent for the past five years and 3.4 percent in the past decade, according to Wilshire Associates, a consulting firm in Santa Monica, Calif. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of stocks rose 12 percent in the year ended June 30.
The Ivy League consists of eight private schools in the northeastern U.S. Columbia University’s $6.5 billion endowment jumped 17 percent in the past year, while the University of Pennsylvania’s $5.7 billion fund gained 13 percent. Dartmouth College reported a 10 percent return for its $3 billion fund. Cornell University said its $4.4 billion in investments rose 13 percent.
Below is a list of endowment results for selected schools.
- Brown, $2.18 billion endowment – 10% investment return
- Harvard, $27.4 billion endowment – 11% investment return
- Yale, $16.7 billion endowment – 8.9% investment return
- Stanford, $13.8 billion** endowment – 14% investment return***
- MIT, $8.3 billion endowment – 10% investment return
- Columbia, $6.5 billion endowment – 17% investment return
- Penn, $5.7 billion endowment – 13% investment return
- Cornell, $4.4 billion endowment – 13% investment return
- Dartmouth, $3 billion endowment – 10% investment return
** Fiscal year ended Aug. 31; all others ended June 30.
*** Investment results for 12 months ended June 30.
