Dive Brief:
- A group of researchers have been attempting to determine the demographics of who manages the endowments of the country’s wealthiest colleges over the past few years. But only about one-third of the 50 colleges asked to participate have fully disclosed the information, according to new Knight Foundation research.
- The researchers have been seeking information from the 25 private and 25 public colleges with the largest endowments in the U.S. The institutions collectively hold $566 billion, over two-thirds of the country’s higher education endowment funds.
- Through direct information requests and publicly available data sets, researchers conducted independent analyses on 18 of the 50 institutions. They found the colleges invested between 0% and 38.5% with management firms owned by women or racial or ethnic minorities.
Dive Insight:
The Knight Foundation, in partnership with New York University’s Center for Business and Human Rights and the consulting firm Global Economics Group, has been trying for years to gain insight into who manages the money of the wealthiest higher ed institutions.
This information is valuable because the endowments help fund some of the country’s most influential colleges, the group’s report said.
“We believe equity and inclusion are a general good, and that should be reason enough to push for transparency regarding this type of information,” researchers said in an April blog post about the project. “As engines of opportunity and talent, universities should also want to know if their resources open opportunities for their students –– specifically, students who want to pursue careers in finance and would benefit from an equitable job market –– and for the communities that support them.”
In 2022, 16 colleges participated in the groups’ interim research, though four only provided self-reported data. Over the next two years, the Knight Foundation saw additional success garnering responses from public colleges through public records requests.
However, no similar request process exists for private colleges, so researchers said they have instead repeatedly asked these institutions to participate.
Despite these efforts, only two more private institutions — Northwestern University and University of Southern California — provided partial data sets in the intervening two years.
Fully participating colleges and higher ed systems include:
- Columbia University, in New York.
- Duke University, in North Carolina.
- Michigan State University.
- Princeton University, in New Jersey.
- Rice University, in Texas.
- Rutgers University, in New Jersey.
- University of California system.
- University of Chicago.
- University of Colorado.
- University of Illinois.
- University of Iowa.
- University of Michigan.
- University of Minnesota
- University of Missouri System
- University of Nebraska.
- University of Texas System.
- University of Washington.
- Vanderbilt University, in Tennessee.
An additional eight institutions self-reported data that could not be independently analyzed.
The University of Washington invested 38.5% of their assets with management firms owned by women or racial or ethnic minorities, the highest rate among colleges that participated. Duke had the second highest rate, at 33.4%, followed by the University of Michigan at 29.7%.
One institution, the University of Nebraska, did not work with any diverse-owned firms to manage its endowment, researchers found. However, the report noted that this institution provided information for less than half of its assets.
But due to the low response rate, researchers said they did not average the colleges’ responses to avoid that data point being “misconstrued as a benchmark for the field.”
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