Big East University Endowments

[DFW HOYA]

Than annual endowment survey from NACUBO (National Association of College and University and Business Officers) was released last week, with Georgetown moving up to #60 on the list, with a modest increase of 2.26% on the endowment.

Georgetown remains the lowest US News Top 25 school by endowment--the next closest is CalTech at $2.8 billion and Brown at $4.6 billion. The top three by endowments overall are Harvard ($40.5 billion), Texas ($31.9 billion) and Yale ($31.2 billion).

Note that the up/down is not a measure of rate of return. A school with an amount "down" may have taken money out of the endowment in excess of gains, or had endowment management and investment fees that exceeded the gains; or investment losses. This period also reflects the first three months of COVID through June 30.

Here's how other Big East schools fared:

60. Georgetown University: $1.822 billion, up 2.26%
138. Villanova University: $805.4 million, up 5.02%
152. DePaul University: $737.0 million, up 5.83%
155. St. John's University: $719.6 million, down 0.25%
163. Marquette University: $693.7 million, down 0.61%
180. Creighton University: $565.9 million, down 3.59%
201. University of Connecticut: $476.1 million, up 2.99%
276. Seton Hall University: $265.1 million, up 0.29%
315. Butler University: $210.6 million, down 1.10%
327. Xavier University: $198.6 million, down 0.33%
Not Listed: Providence College, $234.2 million

[DudeSlade]

Thanks for posting DFW. This is fascinating to consider for the university as a whole. You mention that we are the lowest US News Top 25 school. My understanding in the past was that endowment was a non-trivial portion of those rankings and was one of the biggest things keeping us from being ranked higher. Is that still the case?

It also seems that many of our capital campaigns have focused on building and specific projects, not general endowments. Any idea to impact by fundraising vs. performance gains? I remember hearing early in the pandemic that Covid caused many universities to have to tap heavily into their endowments -- I would imagine that's impacted much of the annual up/down performance.

For the sake of our basketball program, I understand why we are comparing ourselves to the other Big East schools, but it's clear that from an overall university level, being associated with them is not doing us any favors (doesn't mean it hurts us necessarily, just not helping us).

[Bigs"R"Us]

The other Big East schools don’t stack up well, especially the three new entrants. You never really want to associate yourself with academically inferior schools over time. It does have an impact on the margin. I believe it helps Syracuse’s stature being in the ACC.

[DFW HOYA]

The endowment is not part of the US News score but "financial resources" (average spending per FTE student) is 10% of the total. Indirectly, a larger endowment provides a higher average spend per student.

Capital campaigns are a misnomer and Georgetown no longer actually calls it a "capital" campaign. Technically, anything collected in a campaign's duration, from a $25 gift at Reunion to Frank McCourt's $100M gift to the school of public policy counts in the total, but of the $1.5B raiaed by Georgetown in the 2010's, maybe 25-30% of that was endowment, and nearly all of the "Georgetown Fund" gifts for financial aid were annual gifts and thus already expended today.

There are those high up in the University food chain who will note that Georgetown's non-Ivy peers reside in the ACC (Duke, Virginia, BC, and to a lesser extent, Wake Forest) but that Jack DeGioia was not even going to consider a jump to the ACC which would have doomed the entire Big East. That having been said, none of the current BE schools are peers in any sense but basketball. Four of these schools have accept rates of 70-80%.

And this is, in part, why men's basketball is approaching a fork in the road. The Big East of 2013 was tailor-made for Georgetown to absolutely dominate it and Georgetown fumbled the ball, figuratively and literally. Many suspects, of course (JT III's diminishing coaching/confidence, poor recruiting, the circumstances around the Ewing hire, GU's institutional reluctance to get into any conflict with John Thompson, et al.) but no culprits...other than this program has fallen further than any of the other nine which began in 2013-14. No Top 25 ranking or NCAA bid since 2015, no Big East final appearance since 2010, and among the bottom three schools in attendance in 2020 despite being in the second largest media market are all by-products.

It's approaching becoming a legacy program, and for those out there who see a first round bid to the 2022 NCAA as a mandate to give Patrick Ewing a 10 year extension, that's the problem. We should expect to be where Villanova is, each and every year, and instead we're striving to be where Providence is...and haven't got there. Ewing is 56-56 in four years, and his reluctance to make any changes to the structure of the basketball office that has been in place through four coaches and 49 years is perhaps even more concerning. If not now, when?

Across the hall, women's basketball has met the fork in the road and Georgetown has decided to do nothing. 5-25 in 2019-20, 1-14 in 2020-21, the senior class chose not to play the season, and no changes, nothing. A $3 million program with no path forward.

[DudeSlade]

Feb 22, 2021 15:07:24 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

The endowment is not part of the US News score but "financial resources" (average spending per FTE student) is 10% of the total. Indirectly, a larger endowment provides a higher average spend per student.

Capital campaigns are a misnomer and Georgetown no longer actually calls it a "capital" campaign. Technically, anything collected in a campaign's duration, from a $25 gift at Reunion to Frank McCourt's $100M gift to the school of public policy counts in the total, but of the $1.5B raiaed by Georgetown in the 2010's, maybe 25-30% of that was endowment, and nearly all of the "Georgetown Fund" gifts for financial aid were annual gifts and thus already expended today.

There are those high up in the University food chain who will note that Georgetown's non-Ivy peers reside in the ACC (Duke, Virginia, BC, and to a lesser extent, Wake Forest) but that Jack DeGioia was not even going to consider a jump to the ACC which would have doomed the entire Big East. That having been said, none of the current BE schools are peers in any sense but basketball. Four of these schools have accept rates of 70-80%.

And this is, in part, why men's basketball is approaching a fork in the road. The Big East of 2013 was tailor-made for Georgetown to absolutely dominate it and Georgetown fumbled the ball, figuratively and literally. Many suspects, of course (JT III's diminishing coaching/confidence, poor recruiting, the circumstances around the Ewing hire, GU's institutional reluctance to get into any conflict with John Thompson, et al.) but no culprits...other than this program has fallen further than any of the other nine which began in 2013-14. No Top 25 ranking or NCAA bid since 2015, no Big East final appearance since 2010, and among the bottom three schools in attendance in 2020 despite being in the second largest media market are all by-products.

It's approaching becoming a legacy program, and for those out there who see a first round bid to the 2022 NCAA as a mandate to give Patrick Ewing a 10 year extension, that's the problem. We should expect to be where Villanova is, each and every year, and instead we're striving to be where Providence is...and haven't got there. Ewing is 56-56 in four years, and his reluctance to make any changes to the structure of the basketball office that has been in place through four coaches and 49 years is perhaps even more concerning. If not now, when?

Across the hall, women's basketball has met the fork in the road and Georgetown has decided to do nothing. 5-25 in 2019-20, 1-14 in 2020-21, the senior class chose not to play the season, and no changes, nothing. A $3 million program with no path forward.

DFW, this is very interesting info and insight. Thanks! It is concerning to think about what would happen to the university's profile if it never regained its basketball prowess and yet stayed in the Big East, perennially a lower tier program in a conference that does not benefit it academically or reputation-wise. If you’re elite in the conference, ala Villanova, I think there's a different perception. But sliding out of the public consciousness without a halo effect from the conference peer institutions doesn't seem beneficial to the overall stature of the school.

[EtomicB]

Feb 22, 2021 15:07:24 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

The endowment is not part of the US News score but "financial resources" (average spending per FTE student) is 10% of the total. Indirectly, a larger endowment provides a higher average spend per student.

Capital campaigns are a misnomer and Georgetown no longer actually calls it a "capital" campaign. Technically, anything collected in a campaign's duration, from a $25 gift at Reunion to Frank McCourt's $100M gift to the school of public policy counts in the total, but of the $1.5B raiaed by Georgetown in the 2010's, maybe 25-30% of that was endowment, and nearly all of the "Georgetown Fund" gifts for financial aid were annual gifts and thus already expended today.

There are those high up in the University food chain who will note that Georgetown's non-Ivy peers reside in the ACC (Duke, Virginia, BC, and to a lesser extent, Wake Forest) but that Jack DeGioia was not even going to consider a jump to the ACC which would have doomed the entire Big East. That having been said, none of the current BE schools are peers in any sense but basketball. Four of these schools have accept rates of 70-80%.

And this is, in part, why men's basketball is approaching a fork in the road. The Big East of 2013 was tailor-made for Georgetown to absolutely dominate it and Georgetown fumbled the ball, figuratively and literally. Many suspects, of course (JT III's diminishing coaching/confidence, poor recruiting, the circumstances around the Ewing hire, GU's institutional reluctance to get into any conflict with John Thompson, et al.) but no culprits...other than this program has fallen further than any of the other nine which began in 2013-14. No Top 25 ranking or NCAA bid since 2015, no Big East final appearance since 2010, and among the bottom three schools in attendance in 2020 despite being in the second largest media market are all by-products.

It's approaching becoming a legacy program, and for those out there who see a first round bid to the 2022 NCAA as a mandate to give Patrick Ewing a 10 year extension, that's the problem. We should expect to be where Villanova is, each and every year, and instead we're striving to be where Providence is...and haven't got there. Ewing is 56-56 in four years, and his reluctance to make any changes to the structure of the basketball office that has been in place through four coaches and 49 years is perhaps even more concerning. If not now, when?

Across the hall, women's basketball has met the fork in the road and Georgetown has decided to do nothing. 5-25 in 2019-20, 1-14 in 2020-21, the senior class chose not to play the season, and no changes, nothing. A $3 million program with no path forward.

This isn't on PE at all in my view, this process should have been led by Reed or above him in the administration...

No one should blame a coach who had zero college experience prior to getting hired...

[centercourt400s]

Wow, what a bait and switch this thread quickly turned in to. Lure people in by talking about endowment rankings then BAM! switch the discussion to yet another dump on Ewing tirade.

[Bigs"R"Us]

I honestly wish we could play in the Ivy League or ACC. We have very little in common with the other Big East schools. Yes, they are mostly Catholic and favor basketball. I don’t have friends who went any of these schools, except Villanova. Why are we playing Butler, Creighton and Xavier? Would not want to move to the Patriot League for all sports though.

[EtomicB]

Feb 22, 2021 22:09:57 GMT -5 Bigs"R"Us said:

I honestly wish we could play in the Ivy League or ACC. We have very little in common with the other Big East schools. Yes, they are mostly Catholic and favor basketball. I don’t have friends who went any of these schools, except Villanova. Why are we playing Butler, Creighton and Xavier? Would not want to move to the Patriot League for all sports though.

What did Gtown have in common with its BE peers 30 plus years ago? You only think this way because Gtown has fallen off the radar over the last 5 seasons...

Gtown plays Butler, Xavier & Creighton because they’re basketball centric schools with dedicated fan bases...

[DFW HOYA]

Feb 22, 2021 21:44:59 GMT -5 centercourt400s said:

Wow, what a bait and switch this thread quickly turned in to. Lure people in by talking about endowment rankings then BAM! switch the discussion to yet another dump on Ewing tirade.

It's not about Ewing. It's about where the basketball investment fits in the University as a whole. For better or worse, and good men and women can disagree on this, basketball just isn't the lever to drive fundraising it may have been in the past. Regardless of record, Ewing hasn't changed that trajectory.

Basketball has been a big driver at Villanova over the past 20 years--it's realigned that school from a regional college to a national university and allowed it to steer well clear of St. Joe's and LaSalle in the Philadelphia region. Basketball is still a big deal at Marquette because they're as known as much for basketball than any other academic program there. For the smaller schools (Butler, Xavier), it drives admissions. Here are the admissions rates at the 11 Big East schools.

Georgetown: 14%
Villanova: 28%
Providence: 47%
Connecticut: 49%
DePaul: 68%
St. John's 72%
Butler: 73%
Creighton: 73%
Seton Hall: 73%
Xavier: 76%
Marquette: 83%

If basketball struggles at Marquette, admissions and fundraising suffer, and people notice. Yet men's basketball has been at 45 year lows at Georgetown for the last 5-7 years. Has it hurt admissions? Not at all--admissions is stronger than it ever was in the Big East glory days. There is no causation that basketball is hurting fundraising, either. One can argue that Georgetown is sufficiently diversified that basketball is just not a priority to fundraising that it is at other Big East schools; yet, it also leads to the kind of benign administrative neglect when things atrophy that manifests itself in a reflexive firing without any visible plan on what do to next.

(I don't pose the "Georgetown to the ACC" question because it would involve substantive changes to what Jack DeGioia called the "ethos and culture of Georgetown". The Big East is far less competitive in that sense and provide less of a fulcrum for alumni discontent.)

Will sustained basketball success in the 2020's be the bell cow at Georgetown to drive giving and endowment? Conversely, if men's basketball maintains its hibernation in March, will there ever be enough response to demand widespread change across the board? Or, to borrow a Frank Rienzo-era phrase, will national success in men's basketball become "an extraordinary achievement, but not necessarily a program goal"? I think that's where women's basketball, football, and a lot of the other sports (outside soccer) stand right now, and most people don't seem too worried about it.

[MCIGuy]

Feb 22, 2021 22:09:57 GMT -5 Bigs"R"Us said:

I honestly wish we could play in the Ivy League or ACC. We have very little in common with the other Big East schools. Yes, they are mostly Catholic and favor basketball. I don’t have friends who went any of these schools, except Villanova. Why are we playing Butler, Creighton and Xavier? Would not want to move to the Patriot League for all sports though.

We have very little in common with them other than, say, history. Providence. St. John's. Villanova. Even DePaul who used to be an annual opponent of Gtown long before it joined the Big East. We certainly have more history with the current BE than we do with the current ACC, even if it does include Syracuse.

[MCIGuy]

Feb 22, 2021 22:33:22 GMT -5 EtomicB said:

Feb 22, 2021 22:09:57 GMT -5 Bigs"R"Us said:

I honestly wish we could play in the Ivy League or ACC. We have very little in common with the other Big East schools. Yes, they are mostly Catholic and favor basketball. I don’t have friends who went any of these schools, except Villanova. Why are we playing Butler, Creighton and Xavier? Would not want to move to the Patriot League for all sports though.

What did Gtown have in common with its BE peers 30 plus years ago? You only think this way because Gtown has fallen off the radar over the last 5 seasons...

Gtown plays Butler, Xavier & Creighton because they’re basketball centric schools with dedicated fan bases...

Exactly. Sounds like sour grapes because we suck. The new BE was a miraculous God-send that most experts didn't expect to work. But it has and good programs like Villanova have managed to take the best advantage of it.

[MCIGuy]

Feb 22, 2021 15:07:24 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

And this is, in part, why men's basketball is approaching a fork in the road. The Big East of 2013 was tailor-made for Georgetown to absolutely dominate it and Georgetown fumbled the ball, figuratively and literally. Many suspects, of course (JT III's diminishing coaching/confidence, poor recruiting, the circumstances around the Ewing hire, GU's institutional reluctance to get into any conflict with John Thompson, et al.) but no culprits...other than this program has fallen further than any of the other nine which began in 2013-14. No Top 25 ranking or NCAA bid since 2015, no Big East final appearance since 2010, and among the bottom three schools in attendance in 2020 despite being in the second largest media market are all by-products.

It's approaching becoming a legacy program, and for those out there who see a first round bid to the 2022 NCAA as a mandate to give Patrick Ewing a 10 year extension, that's the problem. We should expect to be where Villanova is, each and every year, and instead we're striving to be where Providence is...and haven't got there. Ewing is 56-56 in four years, and his reluctance to make any changes to the structure of the basketball office that has been in place through four coaches and 49 years is perhaps even more concerning. If not now, when?

{Here comes one of those old-time MCIGuy rants which means I am hijacking this thread. Apologies ahead of time.}

Why does every critique you write wound up being a jab at Ewing? I mean the subject was about endowments and that in of itself is valuable information that could lead to an interesting discussion in which others could chime in with their own questions about the state of the basketball program. But you couldn't wait for that, you had to personally segue the discourse in the direction of how you feel Ewing isn't getting the job done to your satisfaction (which we all already know), which makes me get suspicious that this was your main intent all along.

Why even bring Ewing's record into play, especially the inclusion of this year's wins and losses into that accumulation? You were after all arguably the most vocal person here who conceded with all the pre-season prognostications that the Hoyas were in for an awful season and were destined to finish last in the Big East. Remember all that consternation and moral outrage that erupted from you as if you were shocked (SHOCKED!) that the Hoyas would be predicted to be that low following such an exodus of key players? I sure do. So tell me is the situation this year's team is in any worse than you thought?

I will write once more what I wrote months ago : season three of this Ewing run was a once in a generation (or two generations, or three, or....) calamity. Whether that was the fault exclusively of Ewing in terms of who he recruited, his supervision of them, his handling of each player's situation (including in the end that of McClung) and his inability to hold things together or whether the onus falls more on the selfishness (at best) players and an arguably inept athletic department that didn't do the team any favors is up for debate. Perhaps its a combination of all the above, although in the end the buck stops at Ewing's feet. Whatever the reason a team which had the talent to put it altogether and easily make the NCAA tournament was decimated by mid-season departures and key injuries to the two best remaining players. The guys that departed left the program in a bad spot because they were all expected to be around the next season and now the team found itself behind the curve in terms of recruiting. This was followed by the graduation of one of the remaining two best players and the surprising late transfer of the other best one. Thus the reasonable conclusion that most people came to was that 2020-2021 season was going to be a very difficult one for Georgetown Basketball.

I am not going to argue that the losses (in terms of actual games) Ewing has compiled in seasons three and four are not part of his official record as coach. They are. What I will argue is that an asterisk should be applied on these two seasons in terms of judgment of Ewing getting positive results on the court. In other words his ability to coach a team to wins. I make this argument because the loss of such personnel and the way it happened is a great obstacle to overcome and would be a tough challenge for ANY coach.

Now this is different than judging Ewing as the head of a program with high ambitions. While he gets points for not being afraid to bench his starters, putting together a team of coaches who can spot gem recruits who were unheralded, making sure (from all accounts) that his players are hitting the books and dismissing guys who run afoul of his rules, he does not get high grades for doing enough to bring the program into the 21st century or, most of all, for keeping teams together through season to season continuity. This last part has been the biggest detriment so far in his tenure in my eyes.

Hate to sink to the level of politics, but, DFW, you come across like those folks in the media who blame Democrat Presidents for not doing a fast enough job of getting the country out of the ditch after inheriting an economic mess left by Republicans. You seem to suggest that Ewing should have the program back to prominence by now. One thing we definitely see eye-to-eye on was that Georgetown was better suited than any other program to benefit from this new Big East. Georgetown was the program leading the Catholic schools according to numerous articles. Georgetown was the program who was most key when those schools decided to go on their own. And Georgetown had the most prestige, the most household recognition and the most recent success of all the Catholic teams that were splitting. And then Gtown managed to flounder in ways unexpected.

One other thing I mentioned over a year ago was that if someone had told me those roughly ten years ago that there was going to be a team in the new Big East that would go on to win a couple of championships fairly early on, I would’ve been 90% convinced it would have been Georgetown. Hell, make it 95%. Of course I would have been 100% wrong. And the fault for that lays at the feet of JTIII. III was a very good man who did a lot of very good things at Georgetown. But all of his good, even his Final Four run, will forever be overshadowed by his countless first round exits in the NCAA tournaments and his allowing Jay Wright and Villanova to gallop way ahead of Georgetown as the Hoyas fell on their faces. If, perhaps, III was more willing to take blame for his failures, was less arrogant (I never wanted to believe those inside stories RDF used to send to me via PM about him but it turns out they may have all been true), quicker in doing away with his style of play that lost him tons of recruiting battles and led to his teams being unable to make comebacks in NCAA tourney games, was more personable to his guys in a way that would make them want to run through a wall for him, etc., then it very well may have led to an alternate reality in which Georgetown won those titles instead of Villanova. We’ll never know.

And I am sorry I had to dump on III like that after criticizing you for dumping on Ewing. My reason for doing so is to emphasize the smoking mess Ewing inherited. I also did it because it makes me curious how a handful of people who were impatient with Ewing after season one, were willing to make endless excuses for III when his teams lost year after year after year in the first round of tournaments to teams with far inferior seeding. It was as if each time they were claiming the problem was not III’s coaching or preparation, but that the tournament screwed up by giving those opponents too low a seed.

So, in short, Ewing inherited a program in a ditch. It look as if he was making quick work of getting out of it with season two but then SEASON THREE happened and that ditch got deeper. Even if the disastrous off-court issues were largely because of his decisions, I was willing to give him a pass for season three in terms of on-court results and because it was such a huge setback I was equally willing to give him such a pass for season four if need be. Last season the Hoyas surprised me though for how hard they fought in the second half of the BE season despite being so undermanned. This season the Hoyas have surprised me for, as of now, getting back on track after such a rough start in the Big East. That credit goes to Ewing. Yes, those losses at home to Villanova and Marquette are mostly unforgivable but NOT by people on this very site who thought the Hoyas would be lucky to squeeze out two or three wins in a full season in the first place. If you had felt at the beginning that these Hoyas would not be competitive at all, how can you be critical of their current record? What does it matter if they lost to Nova after having an 18 point lead if you had figured the team was not capable of giving the Wildcats a competitive game anyway?

Yes, Georgetown is currently a joke to most. Yes, the people running things at key positions in the athletic department seem to be amateurs when you line them up to their counterparts at comparable schools. Yes, Ewing has not proven as of yet he has what it takes to turn things around and make the program prominent again. Yes, for alums and fans the program is far from where we think it should be. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

But this season’s team under Ewing, despite all that has gone wrong and those low expectations, could just as easily be 7-5 or 8-4 in the Big East and that is rather stunning. Being 5-7 right now isn’t too shabby either. And there is the little fact that Ewing just had his best recruiting success a couple of months back. Of course things could go south the rest of the way in terms of wins and losses, but this season was expected to be a wash anyway.

The asterisk comes down in season five and that’s when I can more thoroughly judge Ewing fairly once more because seasons three and four were like starting all over again from scratch.

[the_way]

Hoyatalk never gets old. lol

[DFW HOYA]

Feb 23, 2021 8:18:20 GMT -5 MCIGuy said:

Why does every critique you write wound up being a jab at Ewing? I mean the subject was about endowments and that in of itself is valuable information that could lead to an interesting discussion in which others could chime in with their own questions about the state of the basketball program. But you couldn't wait for that, you had to personally segue the discourse in the direction of how you feel Ewing isn't getting the job done to your satisfaction (which we all already know), which makes me get suspicious that this was your main intent all along.

Please see the above post which addresses this.

hoyatalk2.proboards.com/post/912592

[centercourt400s]

Feb 23, 2021 10:48:50 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

Feb 23, 2021 8:18:20 GMT -5 MCIGuy said:

Why does every critique you write wound up being a jab at Ewing? I mean the subject was about endowments and that in of itself is valuable information that could lead to an interesting discussion in which others could chime in with their own questions about the state of the basketball program. But you couldn't wait for that, you had to personally segue the discourse in the direction of how you feel Ewing isn't getting the job done to your satisfaction (which we all already know), which makes me get suspicious that this was your main intent all along.

Please see the above post which addresses this.

hoyatalk2.proboards.com/post/912592

As a reader of this thread it is clear that your (probably valid and well thought out) point has been lost because of the unnecessary Ewing criticism. Your point could have been made without saying: "It's approaching becoming a legacy program, and for those out there who see a first round bid to the 2022 NCAA as a mandate to give Patrick Ewing a 10 year extension, that's the problem. We should expect to be where Villanova is, each and every year, and instead we're striving to be where Providence is...and haven't got there. Ewing is 56-56 in four years, and his reluctance to make any changes to the structure of the basketball office that has been in place through four coaches and 49 years is perhaps even more concerning. If not now, when?"

Including that paragraph turned the thread into yet another Ewing criticism thread, which a lot of us are getting sick of seeing.