University Times

Pitt ranks 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 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 $1.8 billion in 2006, an increase of 17.8 percent.

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; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of Notre Dame; the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

At $1.8 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,” the study added.

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