Columbia and Yale are at the top of a new ranking of long-term university endowment investment performance.
Both Ivy League schools produced an average return of 11 percent over the last 10 years, according to a compilation of publicly disclosed figures compiled by executive recruitment firm Charles A. Skorina & Co.
That was better than peers like the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell, whose endowments returned 8.1 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively. The S&P 500 index returned 7.8 percent over the same 2005 to 2014 period. And the average endowment with more than $1 billion grew by 8.5 percent, according to an NACUBO-Commonfund study.
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Elite school endowment performance over 10 years
| | Endowment | 10-yr rtn % | AUM $bn | 1-yr rtn% | 3-yr rtn % | 5-yr rtn% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Columbia | 11 | 9.2 | 17.5 | 10.3 | 14.2 |
| 2 | Yale | 11 | 23.9 | 20.2 | 12.3 | 13.5 |
| 3 | MIT | 10.9 | 12.4 | 19.2 | 12.7 | 13.2 |
| 4 | Notre Dame | 10.8 | 9.8 | 19.7 | 11.3 | 13.2 |
| 5 | Duke | 10.8 | 7 | 20.1 | 11.2 | 14.2 |
| 6 | Princeton | 10.5 | 21 | 19.6 | 11.3 | 14 |
| 7 | Stanford | 9.9 | 21.4 | 17 | 9.8 | 13.2 |
| 8 | Univeristy of Chicago | 9.6 | 7.5 | 12.7 | 8.7 | 12.6 |
| 9 | Dartmouth | 9.2 | 4.5 | 19.2 | 12.2 | 13 |
| 10 | Harvard | 8.9 | 36.4 | 15.4 | 12.2 | 11.6 |
| NA | Endowments >$1bn | 8.5 | NA | 16.8 | 9.6 | 12.1 |
| 11 | Brown | 8.3 | 3.2 | 16.1 | 9.7 | 11.5 |
| 12 | Cornell | 8.2 | 6.2 | 15.8 | 8.9 | 11.7 |
| 13 | University of Pennsylvania | 8.1 | 9.6 | 17.5 | 10.9 | 12.9 |
| NA | S&P 500 | 7.8 | NA | 24.6 | 15.4 | 18.1 |
Source: Source: Charles A. Skorina & Co., November 2014
While Columbia and Yale were highest among the country's elite schools, MIT endowment head Seth Alexander earned Skorina's pick as "CIO of the Decade."
Alexander "delivered the strongest endowment performance among his peers over the last volatile 10 years for the lowest 'risk,'" Skorina wrote in a newsletter.
MIT produced returns of 10.9 percent over the last 10 years with the highest Sharpe ratio (0.88) of its peer group. A Sharpe ratio essentially shows how volatile a portfolio is; the higher the number, the lower the theoretical risk.
Columbia's figure was 0.85 and Yale's 0.72. The average $1 billion or more endowment had a Sharpe ratio of 0.73.
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