(Campus Reform) There are 195 countries in the world, and over half of them are poorer than Harvard University.
The Ivy League institution’s 2018 endowment was $38.3 billion, according to Stacker. This amount exceeds the wealth of any of more than half of the 195 countries around the world. To arrive at this determination, Campus Reform compared the endowment numbers listed by Stacker with the “total wealth” of each of the world’s countries, according to Credit Suisse’s 2018 Global Wealth Report.
University endowments operate in a fashion similar to tax-exempt hedge funds, reported Stacker. Private institutions often use nonprofit status to avoid tax, but a provision of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will levy a small tax on schools with funds totaling more than $500,000 per student. Harvard has 36,012 students, with an endowment per student average of more than $1 million.
