November 17, 2008
The $500B University
In the context of some strategy work we’re doing for one of the leading schools of public health, I’ve found myself thinking about the 20-30 year evolutionary paths of major universities more broadly. With returns on assets and capital campaign successes even significantly lower than what we’ve seen in recent years, Harvard should amass an endowment that reaches $500B in today’s dollars by 2030. That represents a net worth as great as the largest private enterprises in the world. Yale, Princeton and others will presumably not be very far behind.
It is my belief that concentrations of assets will fundamentally change the nature of the role that the largest universities play regarding issues of global concern. The pressure to change tax treatments of universities will inevitably grow, well before any endowment hits $500B, and in order to address those pressures, universities will need to expand their spheres of concern and learn to make different kinds of promises of broader public relevance. The changes could be even more significant than those that result from the rise of truly massive private foundations, such as Gates today.

