U.S. college and university endowments saw an average return of 19.8 percent in fiscal year 2011, according to preliminary data from the 2011 National Association of College and University Business Officers and Commonfund Institute's Endowment Study. The data reflected returns at 284 colleges and universities.

"What stands out in these preliminary figures is the fact that, despite the positive returns of this year and last, endowments still have not completely recovered from the damage inflicted by the market declines that accompanied the 2008-2009 credit crisis," said John Walda, president and chief executive officer of NACUBO and John Griswold, executive director of the Commonfund Institute. The two organizations found that the average endowment stands at 86 percent of its value in FY2007.

Other preliminary findings include:

• Average returns were similar across endowment size groups.
• The effective spending rate for the preliminary group averaged 4.3 percent although institutions with very large endowments tended to have spending rates around 5 percent.
• Institutions with smaller endowments (less than $25 million) reported average allocations to domestic equities of 41 percent compared with an average domestic equity allocation of 12 percent for very large endowments (more than $1 billion).

The final study, which will report endowment data on 850 institutions, will be released in January 2012. Additional information is available on the Commonfund website.

This article is from the December 2011 issue of the Community College Advancement News.