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re: Updated SEC Endowment Rankings (report on March 19, 2012)

Posted on 3/23/12 at 2:44 pm to
Posted by aggressor
Austin, TX
Member since Sep 2011
8718 posts
Posted on 3/23/12 at 2:44 pm to
A&M has about 100k students in their system compared to Texas with 140k according to Wiki but I don't think those numbers are accurate. The Texas system does have a lot more Medical/Health related components while the A&M system has a lot more Ag/Engineering/Vet/Transportation components. Both systems are massive though the main campuses obviously dominate them.

It's not really fair to compare Vandy to the public schools because they have no public funding to fall back on. Private schools always have a much larger endowment in general because they have no fallback. States can fund some schools almost entirely without and endowment whereas a private school relies on it and has much looser rules typically about how the money can be used.

A&M and Texas unusual as far as public schools with the size of the endowments and especially the projected growth. They just hit the lottery that Texas was a poor state with a ton of land in the 1800's and so that "worthless" land in West Texas turned out to have so much underneath it. The only other public systems that are really in their league are the University of California System and University of Michigan System which are both in A&M's range. There are only a handful of publics in the country above $2 Billion in endowment. The projected growth of course is going to dwarf everyone as no other system has the natural resources sitting in the ground like the PUF fund.

A&M's biggest strength besides the PUF though is research spending which is over $360 million per year (larger than Texas) and growing fast. A&M is fortunate that they have so much land to combine with the PUF that allows them to build facilities for research like few can. That is what drives the academic rankings.

I also agree with the poster that stated the schools will get over this tiff quickly. The money from athletics is a drop in the bucket compared to the PUF and both schools have known for a long time that as long as they are united politically where it counts they can defeat any assault on their cash cow.
Posted by RandyVandy
Member since Nov 2011
954 posts
Posted on 3/23/12 at 3:58 pm to
quote:

States can fund some schools almost entirely without and endowment whereas a private school relies on it and has much looser rules typically about how the money can be used.


They can? Most "public" schools only receive about 5-20% of their funding from their respective states.
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