Harvard Raised $9.6 Billion in Its Latest Campaign. Here’s What You Could Do With That Money.

Harvard University concluded a five-year capital campaign on Thursday that shattered higher-education fund-raising records, according to The Harvard Crimson, by bringing in more than $9.6 billion. The total was well above the university’s original goal, $6.5 billion.

The campaign began under the leadership of former President Drew G. Faust and ended in June. The next-most-lucrative fund-raising campaign was Stanford University’s most recent, which raised $6.2 billion in five years.

“As new challenges and opportunities arise in higher education and beyond, Harvard is well positioned to respond and adapt thanks to the generosity of our alumni and friends,” said President Larry Bacow, according to The Harvard Gazette.

Of the money raised, Harvard plans to spend $1.3 billion on financial aid; donors are also funding 142 endowed professorships, the university said.

Here’s what else the university could buy with the $9.6-billion chunk of change:

• Cover the estimated yearly cost of attendance for the college’s 6,700 undergraduates for roughly the next 18 years.

• Pay for the entire city of Boston to take 19 classes each at nearby Roxbury Community College.

• Sponsor a friend to join the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on his estimated $5-billion journey around the moon with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

• Pick up the tab for the money spent on the 2016 U.S. presidential and congressional elections, including advertising costs and individual donations.

• Pay tuition for the entire state of Delaware to attend Boston’s Bunker Hill Community College for a year.

How else does $9.6 billion compare?

While Oprah’s $2.8-billion net worth pales in comparison, Harvard’s fund-raising total looks like pennies next to the net worth of some famous alumni. Here are a few other striking comparisons:

• Only 159 people in the world have net worths greater than the amount Harvard raised in its capital campaign, according to Forbes’ latest list of billionaires.

• The Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg is worth 7.6 times as much as the fund-raising record.

• The Republic of South Sudan’s total GDP in 2016 was $2.9 billion in U.S. dollars — a little over a third of Harvard’s new funds.

• The combined net worth of Beyoncé and Jay Z is about one-seventh of Harvard’s record-breaking fund-raising total.

• Finally, Harvard’s billions would barely leave a dent in the nation’s $1.5 trillion in student-loan debt, wiping out less than 1 percent of it.

Follow Cailin Crowe on Twitter at @cailincrowe, or email her at cailin.crowe@chronicle.com.