Endowment hits record high

Yale’s investments gained $4 billion last year, bringing the endowment to a record-high $23.9 billion after spending, the university announced today.

The 20.2 percent return in the year ending June 30 outstripped the 15.4 gain that Harvard announced a day earlier, although Harvard’s fund is still about 50 percent larger than Yale’s.

The bumper-year performance pushed Yale’s endowment above its previous peak of $22.9 billion in 2008. The financial crash that fall erased 24.6 percent of the endowment’s value. The past five years have brought returns ranging from less than 5 percent—which was more than wiped out by spending from the endowment—to nearly 22 percent.

Other endowment fun facts, from the Yale press release:

• In the past decade, the endowment posted average annual returns of 11 percent, compared to an estimated average of 7.6 percent for colleges and universities.
• Yale’s endowment distributions to the operating budget nearly doubled in that same decade.
• Twenty years ago, the endowment stood at $3.5 billion. Average annual returns of 13.9 percent fueled its rise to the current $23.9 billion value.

David Swensen ’80PhD has headed Yale’s investment office since 1985. When he took office, the endowment was worth $1.3 billion.

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The Yale Alumni Magazine is published by Yale Alumni Publications Inc., an alumni-based nonprofit that is not run by Yale University. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the university administration.