College endowments posted annual returns that were up from the year before, when a rocky stock market — battered by over-the-top inflation and the beginning of the war in Ukraine — put a sharp dent in their value.
According to the annual NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments, released today, college endowments had an average one-year return of 7.7 percent, net of fees, in the 2023 fiscal year. The year before, the endowments’ overall average return was minus 8 percent.
Although endowments both large and small saw positive results, returns for institutions with the smallest endowments were particularly robust. Endowments of under $50 million saw an average return of nearly 10 percent in the 2023 fiscal year, the highest among the seven size cohorts in the study. In comparison, institutions in the group with the largest endowments, more than $5 billion — which typically perform better than the endowments of their smaller peers — saw the lowest average one-year return, at 2.8 percent.
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