The Largest University Endowments

The funds at the top of this ranking run similar playbooks with very different results. Four sit above the rest, and each moved markets in fiscal 2025.

Harvard's endowment is the largest in US higher education, managed by Harvard Management Company. It returned 11.9% net of expenses in fiscal 2025 and rose to $56.9 billion from $53.2 billion, per HMC's annual report. Private equity is 41% of the portfolio and hedge funds 31%, with public equities at just 14%. Distributions cover nearly 40% of Harvard's operating budget, yet the university still ran its first deficit since the pandemic. In April 2025 HMC agreed to sell about $1 billion of private equity fund stakes to Lexington Partners, advised by Jefferies, per Bloomberg.

UTIMCO, the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company, is the largest endowment manager in the country. It invests the combined UT and Texas A&M endowments and oversees close to $88 billion including operating funds, anchored by the $40.3 billion Permanent University Fund, per UTIMCO. Its endowments returned 10% for the year ending August 31, 2025, below the NACUBO average, per Pensions & Investments. UTIMCO also moved to cut new private-markets commitments by roughly 10% a year after raising its distribution target to 7%, a sign that even the largest funds are managing private-equity overexposure.

Yale pioneered the endowment model and still runs one of its purest versions. It returned 11.1% in fiscal 2025, a $4.5 billion gain, lifting the endowment to $44.1 billion after $2.1 billion in distributions, per Yale. Endowment income funds about a third of Yale's operating budget under a 5.25% target spending rate. Facing a constrained fiscal 2026 budget, Yale ran its first-ever secondaries sale, exploring a disposal of private equity fund interests reported between about $3 billion and $6 billion, per Yale Daily News and Secondaries Investor.

Stanford posted the strongest fiscal 2025 of the group, a 14.3% Merged Pool return, above the 10.9% Cambridge Associates median, per Stanford. Its endowment stood at $40.8 billion at its August 31 fiscal close. The result did not spare the budget — Stanford cut $140 million and laid off 363 staff in August 2025, citing federal funding pressure and the coming endowment tax, per the Stanford Daily. A strong market did little to insulate the university from policy risk.

Below the top four, Princeton and MIT show the endowment model at its most concentrated, and the spending math that makes the system work.

Princeton runs the most alternatives-heavy book on this list: 78% of PRINCO's managed investments sit in alternatives, 42% in private equity, per the Daily Princetonian. The endowment returned 11.0% in fiscal 2025 and reached $36.4 billion, up from $34.1 billion, per Princeton Alumni Weekly. Princeton also holds the highest endowment per student, about $3.9 million. That figure would place it in the 8% tax tier, but a $44 million financial-aid expansion cut its tuition-paying enrollment below the law's 3,000-student floor, exempting it entirely and saving an estimated $180 million a year, per the Daily Princetonian.

MIT's endowment, run by MITIMCo, returned 14.8% in fiscal 2025, its best in three years, and reached $27.4 billion, matching its fiscal 2021 peak, per MIT. Endowment support for operations rose 5.7% to $1.57 billion, at an effective spending rate of 5%. MITIMCo warned that the new excise tax will be a material cost; over five years, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford could each pay more than $1 billion, per the American Enterprise Institute.

The model these funds share was built at Yale in the 1980s by the late David Swensen. He moved the endowment out of a 60/40 stock-and-bond mix into private equity, venture capital, real assets, and hedge funds, to capture the illiquidity premium a perpetual fund can afford. Under Swensen, Yale grew from $1.3 billion to roughly $41.9 billion, compounding about 13.1% a year over 35 years, per Yale. The largest endowments now hold well over half of their assets in private and alternative strategies.

The spending policy turns market returns into operating dollars. Most large endowments spend roughly 5% of a trailing average value each year, enough to fund budgets without depleting principal: Yale targets 5.25%, MIT ran a 5% effective rate in fiscal 2025, and Harvard's 8% return benchmark is set to cover a 5% draw plus inflation. That draw is the point of the endowment — and it explains why strong returns still coexisted with deficits and layoffs across these campuses in fiscal 2025.

Endowments allocate for perpetuity, which lets them hold illiquid assets others cannot. Large endowments, those above $1 billion, commit roughly 30% to 40% of assets to private equity and venture capital combined. Individual fund commitments commonly run from $50 million to $200 million, with the largest checks reserved for long-standing managers. A single endowment commitment can anchor a new fund's close.

Manager selection drives the model. Endowments back a concentrated set of managers and prize access to the best, especially in venture, where returns are highly dispersed. Top-quartile venture funds have historically beaten the S&P 500 by double digits, while the median fund barely clears it. That gap is why endowments screen hard for top-quartile track records and re-up with proven managers over first-time funds.

The largest endowments run their own investment companies. Harvard has HMC, Yale its Investments Office, Princeton PRINCO, Stanford SMC, and MIT MITIMCo, each a dedicated team investing in-house. That is the exception. Across the 2025 NACUBO-Commonfund Study, 46.2% of institutions used an outsourced CIO, a share that rises above 50% for endowments under $500 million, per NACUBO. Below the top tier, an OCIO usually selects the managers.

Diligence is slow and relationship-driven. Endowment teams are small, rarely more than 50 people, and route commitments through the CIO and asset-class heads over months. They favor re-ups with GPs they have backed for years, which makes a first-time fund a hard sell without a differentiated edge. For a manager, an endowment's name on the cap table helps close the next raise.

Not every endowment is reachable. The largest funds are high-value limited partners but nearly impossible to access without an existing relationship, since they concentrate on re-ups with managers they already back. Endowments in the $500 million to $2 billion range are more accessible and are expanding private-markets allocations, a more productive segment for a new manager.

The gatekeeper reality is blunt. Endowments favor established managers with long track records, top-quartile performance, and the capacity to absorb a large commitment. Two of the biggest, Harvard and Yale, spent fiscal 2025 selling private equity stakes rather than adding exposure, per Bloomberg and Secondaries Investor. Slower new commitments across large limited partners make the market tighter for first-time funds.

Reaching an endowment means reaching the right desk. The practical step is to identify who leads the relevant strategy, private equity, venture, or real assets, and what that fund is currently backing, then bring a specific, differentiated case rather than a cold pitch.

Altss maps university endowments within its coverage of 30,000+ institutional investors, RIAs, and family offices. It tracks each institution's investment office, mandates, and publicly observable activity, with verified decision-makers refreshed on a sub-30-day cycle, in-platform. The data shortens the research, not the relationship: it identifies who runs private equity or real assets at an endowment and what it is backing, so outreach reaches the right desk.

Figures are drawn from each institution's own reports and the following authoritative sources.