Harvard’s obscene Endowment Fund
To the editor:
As of June 30th, 2024, Harvard recorded $53.2 billion dollars in its’ Endowment Fund. That is money available for the university to spend if they wish to. According to Harvard Management Company reports, they earned 9.6% (and have averaged 9.3% over the last 7 years) rate of return in 2024 on their Endowment Fund. That return equals approximately $5.1 billion dollars.
Harvard graduates roughly 3,456 graduate and undergraduate students annually.
If we assume that the freshman thru junior classes have the same number of students enrolled as the graduating class members have at graduation, (4 x 3,456 =13,824) then the amount of money per student available annually is $368,923. This is the amount of money generated by their Endowment Fund from its investments that is available to spend on each enrolled student during the course of one year. The management report showed that it distributed $2.4 billion dollars for fiscal year 2024 meaning that $2.7 billion dollars was retained by the Endowment Fund for reinvestment. In 2024 (FY), Harvard received $686,000,000 in Federal funding (taxpayer dollars)
Why are taxpayers funding an institution of “higher learning” when clearly Harvard has more than sufficient funds to fund its own budget requirements? The Federal monies taken by Harvard should be clawed back and that would still leave them an additional $2 billion dollars to add to their bloated Endowment Fund.
It’s long past time to review all the federal monies contributed by our hard-working taxpayers that are literally gifted to these institutions with absolutely no oversight on their expenditures.
Max Christian
St. James City