Pitt Ranked High in FY 2006 Percentage Increase in Market Value of Its Endowment

University’s $1.8-billion endowment also listed as eighth-largest among those of U.S. public colleges, universities in new NACUBO report

Pitt ranked 4th among U.S. public institutions of higher education and 10th among all U.S. colleges and universities with endowments in excess of $1 billion when it comes to the percentage increase in the market value of its endowment for fiscal year 2006, according to figures in the just-issued 2006 Endowment Study of the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).

The Pitt endowment’s market value rose from $1.53 billion in 2005 to $1.80 billion in 2006 for an increase of 17.8 percent, according to the NACUBO study.

Other schools with endowments of more than $1 billion that achieved top-10-ranked percentage increases were Boston College; Emory, Northwestern, Tufts, and Yale universities; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of Notre Dame; the University of Pennsylvania; and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Pitt’s FY 2006 percentage increase in its endowment was greater than the percentage increases in the endowments of such other schools as Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia universities and the University of Michigan, University of California, University of Virginia, and University of Wisconsin.

At $1.80 billion as of June 30, 2006, Pitt’s endowment appears in the NACUBO report listing as the eighth largest among the endowments of U.S. public institutions of higher education and No. 28 among those of all U.S. colleges and universities.

The percentage figure given for each school “represents an endowment’s change in market value between fiscal year-end 2005 and fiscal year-end 2006,” the NACUBO study states. “Factors such as growth from gifts, reductions due to expenditures and withdrawals, and investment returns determine an endowment’s fiscal year-end market value.”

College and university endowments worth more than $1 billion had an average annual return of 15.2 percent in FY 2006.