Methodology and Sources
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Metric definition:
Reported endowment market value (USD billions).

Ranking logic:
Higher values rank higher.

Methodology extracted from article:
Methodology The ranking measures reported endowment market value: long-term investment assets held for institutional support, including true endowments and funds functioning as endowment when the reporting source groups them together. Values are shown in USD billions and rounded to two decimals. FY2025 is used for the 2026 edition because endowment reporting follows fiscal years, not calendar-year article labels. The 2026 label refers to a publication-year ranking based on the latest completed fiscal-year data broadly available in 2026. Reporting entitySome entries are single private universities; others are public systems, medical centers or affiliated foundations. The table keeps the reporting entity name rather than reallocating system assets to individual campuses. Calculation logicRanking order is based on reported FY2025 endowment market value. No per-student adjustment, spending-rate adjustment or operating-budget adjustment is applied. RoundingValues are rounded to the nearest $0.01B. Rounding improves readability but can create apparent ties between entities with slightly different unrounded values. What the metric excludesThe ranking does not measure teaching quality, research output, admissions selectivity, affordability, endowment per student, annual payout, unrestricted cash or budget strength. Comparability limits matter. Donor restrictions can prevent universities from freely spending large portions of an endowment. Public systems may pool assets across multiple campuses. Foundations may manage funds legally separate from the university but dedicated to its mission. Market values also move after fiscal year-end, so the ranking should be read as a fiscal-year financial snapshot rather than a live asset valuation. Next: Full RankingBack to chart

Sources extracted from article:
Sources The source stack prioritizes NACUBO/Commonfund methodology and public endowment market-value tables. The full downloadable data pack also includes source URLs in CSV, JSON and XLSX formats. NACUBO-Commonfund Study of EndowmentsPrimary sector benchmark for U.S. higher-education endowment market values, returns, asset allocation, spending and governance practices.https://www.nacubo.org/Research/2025/NACUBO-Commonfund-Study-of-Endowments 2025 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments — summary observationsSummary report confirming the FY2025 reporting framework, total respondent assets and sector-level results.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED679860.pdf Commonfund FY25 NCSE release materialsCompanion release context for the NACUBO-Commonfund endowment study and its fiscal-year reporting framework.https://www.commonfund.org/research-center/press-releases/fy25-nacubo-commonfund-study-released Public NACUBO-derived endowment listPublic table used for the row-level FY2025 values in this corrected ranking. It separates private and public reporting entities and states that data are from NACUBO as reported in spring 2026.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment

Limitations:
The dataset is generated from the published StatRanker article table. It inherits the limitations of the original source, metric definition, reporting period, rounding and coverage. The values should not be interpreted outside the stated unit and methodology.
