List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment
Many institutions of higher education in the United States maintain financial endowments, sums of money that are invested in stocks, yielding returns that fund a portion of an institution's operational expenses and help ensure that it survives in perpetuity. U.S. colleges and universities maintain some of the largest endowments in the world, and make up the strong majority of educational institutions with endowments greater than $1 billion. In 2005, the endowment table below totaled $219.37 billion. By 2015, the table totaled $394.96 billion, an increase  of 80%. , the total further increased to $479.23 billion. The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) maintains information on college endowments. Strong returns in fiscal 2020-21 led the largest university endowments to soar. The four largest endowments — Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton — increased in value from $127.24 billion to $171 billion in a single year. Enhancements and levies. The tabulated data below are from NACUBO. Some universities benefit from endowments that are not under their direct control but which are nonetheless dedicated to the welfare of one or several institutions. Examples include The  Duke Endowment, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, and the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust. In 2017, a federal endowment tax was enacted in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 in the form of an excise tax of 1.4% on institutions that have at least 500 tuition-paying students and net assets of at least $500,000 per student. The $500,000 is not adjusted for inflation, so the threshold is effectively lowered over time. The endowment tax provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been criticized as funding tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy at  the expense of education. Critics note that the tax could threaten financial aid for low-income students, stifle social mobility, and obstruct life-saving research. There continue to be vigorous efforts that advocate the repeal of the tax. Repeal legislation with bipartisan cosponsorship was introduced, but not passed, by both the 115th United States Congress and 116th United States Congress.