Connect with your Facebook Account

• Contact

Football Articles

10

2009 University Endowment Rankings – Size Matters

Posted by Ag_in_TX on February 15th, 2010 under Football, Uncategorized

Over at Barking Carnival, horninexile did a nice piece on trying to understand how various universities research programs affect the ways schools may choose to align themselves in the next D1 football shakedown.

Another way the academic “wealth” of a university is measured is by its endowments. Size of endowments are, simply put, a fairly accurate barometer of the magnitude of society’s faith that an institution will continue to push the frontiers of human knowledge. The larger the endowment, the more capable society thinks that institution is fulfilling its core mission as a university.

Of course, this does not mean that schools with huge endowments have great athletic programs. But in the mind of the decision makers (i.e., university presidents), these are the schools who the upper tier believe they “belong” with.

For the sake of clarity, let’s look at the 2009 endowment rankings of the schools that play D1 football. These rankings are system wide, so A&M’s Vet school is included with A&M – Texas’ Med school with Texas and so on.

There are 25 schools playing D1 football that have endowments exceeding $1 billion. They are, in order (all amounts are billions)

1. Stanford University $ 12.619
2. University of Texas System $ 12.163

3. University of Michigan $ 6.001

4. Northwestern University $ 5.445
5. Texas A&M University System $ 5.084

6. University of California $ 4.937
7. University of Notre Dame $ 4.795
8. Duke University $ 4.441

9. Rice University $ 3.613

10. Vanderbilt University $ 2.834
11. University of Southern California $ 2.671
12. University of Virginia $ 2.557

13. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill $ 1.905
14. University of Pittsburgh $ 1.837
15. Ohio State University $ 1.652
16. University of Washington $ 1.649
17. Purdue University $ 1.458
18. University of Wisconsin $ 1.373
19. Boston College $ 1.341
20. Indiana University $ 1.227
21. Pennsylvania State University $ 1.226
22. University of Minnesota $ 1.077
23. Michigan State University $ 1.047
24. Southern Methodist University $ 1.035
25. University of Florida $ 1.011

Note how many Big 10 schools there are – nine. Only Iowa and Illinois miss this list. This goes a long ways towards explaining the “tightness” of the Big 10 Conference – these schools “belong” together.

Also note that there are exactly two Big XII schools in these rankings, and they are #2 and #5. You know that the Texas and A&M presidents know that their schools don’t “belong” with the others. The SEC only has two schools, one at #10 and Florida barley eeking in at #25.

Once again, looking at a list like this suggests A&M and Texas ought to be somewhere else.

Article Tags:

, ,

More from this Author:


Share This

10 Responses

  1. Sailor Ripley said:

    February 15th, 2010 at 1:08 pm

    Interesting read, AIT.

    Surprised Illinois isn’t on there.

  2. Jrog said:

    February 15th, 2010 at 1:16 pm

    We rich, bitch!

  3. ColoradoAg said:

    February 15th, 2010 at 1:37 pm

    Research projects BLING BLANG

  4. artvandelay said:

    February 15th, 2010 at 3:28 pm

    AIT, where did these numbers come from.

  5. Ag_in_TX said:

    February 15th, 2010 at 4:49 pm

    http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/research/2009_NCSE_Public_Tables_Endowment_Market_Values.pdf

  6. Gopher86 said:

    February 16th, 2010 at 12:54 pm

    To be fair, Baylor’s medical endowment is listed separately. Together with the University’s numbers, their endowment comes to around $2 billion.

    The middle of the Big 12 pack hovers at around a billion, which is where the bottom of the Big 10 is.

  7. okc ag said:

    February 16th, 2010 at 8:45 pm

    Your endowments ranking is misleading. University of Texas System $ 12.163 billion and
    Texas A&M University System $ 5.084 billion includes PUF. I don’t think it is true reflection of endowment for UT @ Austin and TAMU @ CS as PUF covers all the schools in the system. True endowments figure for UT @ Austin and TAMU @ CS exist and it is quite sizeable but I think A&M drops out of top 10.

    Also, professional schools in UT system such as UT SW medical school have separate endowments and often approach billion in figure. What is truly astounding is the fact, UT Austin’s research ranking doesn’t include any of the research done at all the Health science center such as in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. It is one reason that Texas has fewer Tier 1 University since these research power houses are not linked to undergraduate institution. If UT Arlington were to some how get linked to UT SW medical school’s research stats/figure, UT Arlington would instantly jump to top 50 in tier 1 category, easy ( in term of research funding, endowment etc).

  8. Ag_in_TX said:

    February 17th, 2010 at 7:49 am

    Yeah, I understand the shortcomings of these rankings but they are the only 2009 numbers I could find.

  9. The Tortilla Retort — Blog — Two Loops & a Hooey - Winter Olympic Edition said:

    February 20th, 2010 at 2:04 pm

    [...] If you really want to know the area we need to address, check out Ag-in-TX’s peep show at this dick measuring contest. [...]

  10. One Foot Down — Blog — The week in news- Super Conference, Trojan Trials and Coach Kelly said:

    March 7th, 2010 at 5:17 pm

    [...] already in the Pac 10 and the same can be said for TCU and the Big 12. On the money note there is also an interesting post at Spence Park Soap Box with some pretty straightforward observations on the money aspect of the issue specifically [...]

Leave a Reply

Follow Us

Related Articles

Hot Forum Topics

Activity

FanTake Topics

Aaron Green BCS Big 10 Big 10 Expansion Big 12 Big 12 Football Big Ten Big XII Bo Pelini Brian Kelly College Basketball College Football Colorado Buffaloes Kansas Jayhawks LeBron James Mack Brown Malcolm Brown Missouri Tigers ncaa football Nebraska Cornhuskers New York Yankees NFL Notre Dame Fighting Irish Ohio State Buckeyes Oklahoma Sooners Oklahoma State Cowboys Pac 10 Recruiting SEC SMU Mustangs Super Conference Superconference TCU Horned Frogs Texas A&M Aggies Texas Longhorns Texas Tech Texas Tech Red Raiders Tommy Tuberville Tom Osborne USC Trojans

Our Other Blogs