An institution's endowment represents money or property that has been donated over the years, usually with the stipulation that it be invested with only the returns on the investment being spent. This allows the donation to have a much greater impact over a longer period of time than if it were spent all at once.

The total value of an institution's investments is referred to as the institution's endowment. The payout rate refers to how much is spent annually. UC's payout rate is set annually by Regents' Policy.

As of June 30, 2008, the Regents and the campus foundations together held approximately $9.6 billion in endowment funds for the University of California, resulting in approximately $45,000 in endowment funds per student on a systemwide basis.

The elite private schools have sought gifts for endowment for generations and educate far fewer students, resulting in significantly greater number of endowment dollars per student.

Public schools such as UC have relied on state support in the same way that private schools have relied on endowments. However, in the past 20 years the endowments at UC's private comparison institutions have grown substantially while UC's state support has failed to keep pace.

Source: Council on Aid to Education Data Miner.

You may view or download a table of the raw data used to generate these charts in CSV files, which can be opened in spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.

• AC GraphHTML | CSV
• UW Graph HTML | CSV