Larger endowments tended to have a smaller share of their investments in U.S. equities than did smaller portfolios among the colleges surveyed. While smaller endowments were more adversely affected by the plummeting stock market than bigger ones, their institutions likely rely less on those returns for operating revenue, NACUBO noted.
Just over a third of survey respondents reported endowment values of $100 million or less.
The decrease in the first quarter of 2020 is still far from what institutions experienced during the Great Recession. The value of endowments tumbled an average of 22.5% from July to November of 2008, according to a separate NACUBO study.
