The top 50 US university endowments earned a combined return of around US$646.7 billion in their financial year ended June 30 despite facing funding cuts from the Trump administration, according to latest PitchBook data.
In the face of what it described as a “challenging year” Harvard University saw its endowment grow to $56.9 billion, achieving a return of 11.9%, up from 9.6% in the prior financial year.
Intriguingly, the endowment as of end-June 2025 was heavily weighted towards alternatives, with 41% in private equity and 31% in hedge funds versus 14% in public equities, 5% in real estate and only 4% in bonds.
Alan M. Garber, president of Harvard, warned in the university’s 2025 annual report last month of “what will no doubt be among the most difficult and demanding periods” in its history. But on the financial side at least, it appears that Harvard is doing what it needs to do to weather this period.
Stanford Management Company delivered a 14.3% return on the university’s $47.7 billion endowment, up from 8.4% previously, while the return on Yale University Endowment $44.1 billion rose to 11.1% from 5.7%.
Yale Investments highlights its use of the Yale Model, pioneered by David Swensen and Dean Takahashi for institutional investors, and “widely regarded as one of the most successful institutional investment strategies and has been influential in reshaping how university endowments and other large institutional investors manage their funds”.
This model drew some harsh criticism around the middle of the year, mostly regarding the discounted secondary market sell-off of endowments’ private market positions amid private equity’s liquidity crunch. But given the performance figures, that criticism may be due for review.
The US university endowments provide persuasive models for other entities looking to build endowment funding, though their performance will likely be hard to match since they are due to a combination of longstanding relationships, internal expertise, generous donations and tight discipline.
But if anyone deserves such returns in the US at present, it is probably the university endowments.
