Of all the universities in the United States, none has a larger endowment than Harvard University. With an over $56 billion endowment, it’s mighty hard for most schools, even the most elite schools in the land, to boast an endowment anywhere near the size of Harvard’s. In fact, the university with the second largest endowment is Yale, with an over $44 billion endowment. Princeton has an endowment of about $36 billion, while Stanford boasts approximately $40 billion. And MIT’s got over $27 billion in its piggy bank (or should we say war chest). These institutions represent the five largest college endowments in America. 

How has Harvard’s endowment grown over time, and what does that tell us about where it is headed?

Harvard’s Endowment Over Time

Let’s take a closer look at Harvard’s endowment growth over time relative to the U.S. economy’s inflation rate. The data charted below were drawn straight from Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research & Analytics and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fiscal Year	Harvard Endowment Value (in $Billions)	Return on Investments	Annual Inflation Rate
2025	$56.90	11.90%	2.80%
2024	$53.20	9.60%	3.40%
2023	$50.70	2.90%	4.80%
2022	$50.90	−1.8%	6.20%
2021	$53.20	33.60%	3.60%
2020	$41.90	7.30%	1.70%
2019	$40.90	6.50%	2.20%
2018	$39.20	10.00%	2.10%
2017	$37.10	8.10%	1.80%
2016	$35.70	−2.0%	2.20%

As the data clearly indicate, Harvard’s endowment has grown slowly but surely over the years. While this growth has been by no means linear (as in two of the last ten years, Harvard recorded a loss), the overall growth of the endowment has far outpaced inflation over this period. Perhaps most impressive was the 33.6% growth rate of the endowment during fiscal year 2021, in which the U.S. inflation rate was a mere 3.6%.

The negative growth rate of 1.8% in the following fiscal year may be related to the Harvard Corporation (A.K.A., the governing body calling the shots for Harvard’s investments) publicly divesting from fossil fuels after immense pressure from faculty and the student body. In any event, these losses were short-lived, as Harvard’s endowment has grown every year since, with the last two fiscal years, 2024 and 2025, outpacing inflation and most recently clocking in at a healthy 11.9% (which places Harvard in the middle of the road in terms of Ivy League endowment returns last year but is nonetheless impressive).

Projecting the Growth of Harvard’s Endowment

As our regular readers know well, we have a crystal ball at Ivy Coach. It’s been cited on the pages of newspapers like “The Dartmouth.” In this case, our crystal ball predicts that the return on Harvard’s endowment will gain even more traction next year, keeping well ahead of inflation. And yes, we predict these gains despite what Harvard Magazine has termed a “fiscal and regulatory assault” on the university from the Trump administration, which levied an unprecedented 8% endowment tax on Harvard in July of 2025.

Harvard officials had better pray that the endowment continues to outperform inflation, or else it risks being plunged into negative territory with this heightened tax rate, which The Crimson reports is costing the university $200 million annually. Especially given the sobering fact that Harvard’s gains over the last ten years, which have averaged a 9.6% annualized return, have paled in comparison to the growth of major stock market index funds, such as the S&P 500, which recorded roughly a 14% annualized return over the same period. Something’s got to give, or else Harvard could see its money woes extended far into the uncertain future.