Magic number is 1 billion for U.S. schools

NEWTON, Mass. — Crossing the main quad at Boston College, visitors can’t miss the billion-dollar view.

There is Higgins Hall, the recently renovated science center, with its pricey, Gothic exterior. Behind it sits a new office building, and nearby a dormitory that opened last fall where 322 students enjoy cable and high-speed Internet access.

“I don’t think you can ever over-invest in higher education,” says the Rev. William Leahy, BC’s president. With a $1.15 billion endowment, BC can invest a lot: The school is in the stratosphere of wealth in American higher education.

But the stratosphere is getting crowded.

Forty-seven U.S. colleges and universities have endowments of $1 billion or more, compared wtih 17 a decade ago, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Harvard alone has $22 billion. The University of Washington, the only Pacific Northwest college on the list, had an endowment of $1.3 billion last year.

For American colleges, $1 billion has become a benchmark, a point beyond which schools can stop worrying about the day-to-day and dream big.

“It allows a place to take its other sources of support — student revenues or state financial support — and use them as a base,” said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education. “And use the rest as a source of excellence.”

To shed light on how these schools are using their unprecedented wealth and why they still cost so much to attend, The Associated Press analyzed thousands of numbers collected by the federal government and college guidebooks over the past decade.

Who are the billionaires? The AP found an increasingly varied mix of private and public schools in academe’s financial elite, a group spending heavily on new construction and aggressively recruiting top faculty.

They also are a clique that can induce tuition sticker-shock as never before: Despite tripling its wealth over the last decade, the average billionaire college has nearly doubled its price. Tuition and fees at the average private billionaire college hit $29,002 in 2004; at public universities in the group, it cost $7,230 to attend the typical flagship campus.

They are a group that possesses nearly two-thirds of the endowed wealth in American higher education. But, excluding the branch campuses of billionaire public schools, they educate fewer than one in 25 American undergraduates — raising questions about whether it’s fair for so few schools to have so much.

Their ranks include schools like the eight Ivy League colleges, Stanford, Duke and Chicago. Yet there also are small liberal arts colleges, such as Grinnell in Iowa, and 14 public universities, up from four a decade ago.

Some of those small schools are among the wealthiest, when considered on a per-student basis. For example, Wellesley College, an all-women’s school outside Boston, ranks 39th on the endowment list with $1.18 billion. Purdue University is one slot higher with $1.21 billion, but the Indiana school has 17 times more students.

Expert fundraising, shrewd investing and generous tax laws have all contributed to the billionaires’ riches. Another common factor is age.

The billionaires are, on average, 168 years old, ranging from 93 (Rice) to 369 (Harvard). Colleges need decades, even centuries, to build a reputation, reap the rewards of compounding investment returns, and produce generations of alumni who can be tapped for donations.

Despite their wealth, however, the billionaire colleges are dramatically increasing prices.

The AP’s analysis found tuition and fees rose 63 percent at the average private billionaire school over the last decade, only slightly less than the increase faced by students at private four-year colleges nationally. The University of Richmond alone plans to raise tuition and fees by $8,330, or 31 percent, to $34,850 next year.

At the 14 public schools on the list tuition and fees at flagship campuses are up 106 percent, compared with an increase of 90 percent for students at four-year public colleges nationwide. That translates to an increase of $3,712 at the average public billionaire.

Ask any president of a billionaire college to explain and you’ll get a lecture on how little $1 billion really is: Spend any more than about 5 percent annually, and there may not be enough left for the future. And many endowment funds are for specific purposes, like professorships or landscaping.

But the presidents will also say they are offsetting price increases for those who can afford it with more financial aid for those who can’t.

The private schools have increased grant aid and tuition discounts by two-and-a-half times in the last decade, the AP found. Private billionaires are meeting almost all of what’s called “demonstrated need” — that is, getting students the cash they must have to stay enrolled. Despite recent budget travails, public flagship schools are meeting 84 percent of demonstrated need.

Princeton recently replaced loans entirely with grants, and Yale and Harvard eliminated tuition for students from low-income families. Among public schools, the universities of Virginia, North Carolina and Michigan have recently implemented or announced more financial aid for low-income students.

“Right now, the wealthiest schools are remarkably accessible to low-income students,” said Gordon Winston, a higher education economist at Williams College ($1.23 billion), which recently reduced or eliminated loan burdens for students from families earning less than about $60,000.