Talk:List of universities in the United Kingdom by endowment

2016 Cambridge Endowment

Hi Robminchin (talk · contribs), would you be able to share your workings on Cambridge's endowment? I am quite surprised by the extent to which its endowment has decreased, even taking into account the new accounting procedure. When you were going through the statements, did you notice any footnotes to explain their decrease in endowments? For example, the 2015-16 University of Surrey Financial Statement explained why their financial endowment fell so significantly.

I look forward to hearing from you. EmyRussell (talk) 01:24, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to remove 2006 & 2007 Data

Is it necessary to have so much columns? Looking at the endowment list pages for Canada, Australia and South Africa the data for them only goes back to 2011.EmyRussell (talk) 19:33, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

@Robminchin @AloneInTheWild I have noticed that the two of you have previously edited this page. I would really appreciate your thoughts about this matter. I personally think that this page is too cluttered and would like to remove data from 2006-07 as well as universities which do not have a notable endowment. EmyRussell (talk) 23:33, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

That sound like a very sensible option to me. As it is at the moment, it's hard to edit and difficult to read. Thanks for suggesting it! Robminchin (talk) 23:53, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Statistics

Are there any more recent figures availible? -?

These seem like very small numbers for such big name universities, perhaps i will check the links to make sure the numbers are right — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.21.178.151 (talk) 16:49, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

A lot of this info seems innacurate. I'm updating this stuff based on all UK uni's current figures and will probably have it done in a week. (ricjl (talk) 13:59, 12 January 2013 (UTC))

I have done some updating. I have also tried to rank in order of value. The latest figure for Nottingham Trent University appears to be inflated by a donation that they had received: see http://www.ntu.ac.uk/apps/news/138241-9/Universitys_cancer_research_centre_boosted_by_%C2%A38M_donation.aspx. If the donation is intended to fund expenditure - and the previous £8m donation seems to have been spent - then it is hardly a permanent endowment. But it is how it currently appears in the NTU Accounts. I have not been able so far to access De Montfort University Accounts, which is one endowment which could now be over £1m.Ntmr (talk) 01:11, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

It is good that Sheffield Hallam has been updated. The reference to the 2013 accounts verifies the figures for 2013 and 2012, but how does it also verify the figures for 2011 and 2010? I can't see that it does. Should there not be some other reference?Ntmr (talk) 21:45, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

University of London

London is currently 'including colleges' - but there is only one year for which this information was actually available. I suggest moving London to 'excluding colleges', which is available from their annual financial statements (£79.2M in 2015).Robminchin (talk) 18:57, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

University of Reading

A discrepancy has arisen on this. The figure for the current university endowment on the University of Reading page shows the endowment for the 'Group' (£127.7 million), as shown in the University's financial statements. The figure for the current university endowment shown on this page formerly showed the group endowment, but when the page was (very sensibly) restructured to show the various universities in broad 'bands' of endowment, the figure taken for Reading for this year and for preceding years was for the University itself (£13.9 million, for 2014-15). This obviously makes a great difference to the relative position of the University. Some consensus needs to be reached on which is the more appropriate figure to use. Most Universities seem not to make a distinction between 'University' and 'Group' endowments. The fact that the figures for the 'Group' appear throughout the consolidated statements of the University of Reading suggest that they are likely to be the more appropriate, but it is not self-evident why the distinction is made. I have placed a similar post on the Talk section of 'University of Reading'.Ntmr (talk) 18:53, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Discrepancies with HESA figures and other issues

The Higher Education Statistics Agency data on university finances [1] has a few discrepancies from this list that it would be good to discuss.

• Oxford and Cambridge – The HESA value of that for the universities, not including the colleges.
• Reading – As noted (but not resolved) in a previous discussion, the below here is for the university alone, the 'group' accounts include two endowed trusts, and these are also included in the HESA figures.
• Newcastle – The HESA figures are for the reserved endowment and so do not include the unreserved endowment (this is shown in a separate column in the HESA sheet). This isn't really a discrepancy as the two sources are showing subtly different things (and I don't think anyone else has an unreserved endowment).

The major issue this illustrates is the discrepant treatment of Oxford and Cambridge compared to Reading. If we want to show all associated endowments then that is fine, if we want to show only university endowments this is fine, but to show all associated endowments for Oxford and Cambridge but not for Reading is inconsistent. My suggestion, which will also make life easier, is to remove the college endowments from Oxford and Cambridge so we are only showing the actual endowments of the universities on this page.

Another issue is the category of "Notable Higher Education Institutions". It is unclear why these are not included in the main table – they are all member institutions of the University of London, so if they are to be in a separate table then so should UCL, King's, LSE, etc. It would be better to include all university-level institutions with significant endowments in the main tables. Robminchin (talk) 06:20, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Robminchin and EmyRussell, I think we should generally go with the group figure rather than the university only figure so transfers within the group don't distort the figures in the list. On individual institutions

• Oxford and Cambridge – I think it is informative to include the colleges, if excluded they could be mentioned in a note.
• Reading – in 2020 stage the group accounts included two endowed trusts, then in 2021 one trust was transferred to the university's reserves and the other to the university's endowment, so in 2022 the group and university figures are the same. Most of the 2022 endowment relates to the 'National Institute for Research in Dairying Trust' so it funds dairy research rather than all the activities of the university. You are probably aware of this but it was not noted on this page.
• Durham – I have noted that figures exclude the two independent colleges following discussion on the university talk page.
• Notable Higher Education Institutions – seems to have been resolved. TSventon (talk) 11:04, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, Reading merged the previously separate trust into the university accounts, so this discussion became moot. I think this was noted in an edit summary. I wonder of it would be good to give Oxford and Cambridge both with and without colleges, as the colleges are independent bodies rather than part of the university group and the funds can't be simply transferred. Robminchin (talk) 17:15, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

I would potentially be open to this change however for the past 10 years of figures, the university endowment figure has been recorded based on university rather than group (or consolidated) figures. There are over 50 institutions on this page and it would require significant time and effort to check and change each financial statement for each year. Having been one of the editors to do so for the past few years, I would like to note that not every institution has the same endowment figure for both university and group.

Regarding Durham, if there are only two independent colleges which have separate endowments and they publish their financial statements, it may be simpler for the page to include their endowments. I am happy to do so provided it is easy to access their financial statements.

Regarding Reading (and Surrey), I have previously added a note to explain their significant changes in endowment values from one year to the next. EmyRussell (talk) 21:01, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Both the independent colleges at Durham are registered charities, so accounts are filed with the Charity Commission: St John's; St Chad's.

Neither of these are presented in quite the same way as university accounts. However, it looks like, as of 2022, St John's has a general endowment fund of £0.3M, but also has specific-use funds such as fellowships, scholarships and the 'centenary endowment fund' listed under restricted funds. St Chad's doesn't identify any funds identified as endowments, but does also have various funds for scholarships and bursaries, etc., listed under restricted funds.

For the purpose of this page, we have (I believe) taken the view that only funds identified in accounts as endowments are counted as endowments and other funds are just other funds even if they happen to be a fund named 'endowment' (this confusion arises regularly regarding Imperial College), so Durham's 2022 endowment including the independent colleges would be £99.7M.

However, another issue that arises is that the colleges have different reporting years, with accounts often not being published until the following summer. It looks like it's the end of May for St John's, whose financial year runs to the end of July, and the end of July for St Chad's, whose financial year runs to the end of September (and both have sometimes filed late). This is quite a lot later than the university's accounts (although their financial year also runs to the end of July – I think the OfS demands a quicker turn-around than the Charity Commission).

So we could do this, but we might have to wait until July, or have a 'provisional' endowment including the previous year's independent college endowments for Durham (which would probably be okay at their current size as any movement is likely to be below the level of our rounding – and it looks like the reported value of St John's endowment hasn't changed since at least 2017 (given in the 2018 accounts, which are the earliest available).

However, as mentioned above, I'm generally of the opinion that we should be following HESA in listing the endowments of the universities (for Oxford, Cambridge and Durham) exclusive of colleges that are independent corporations, i.e. sticking with the way we've been doing things for Durham and moving Oxford and Cambridge to this method. Robminchin (talk) 23:10, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

It also turns out that not all of the Durham college trusts are reported in their accounts as connected charities exempt from registration – the University College Durham Trust (at least) is separately registered with the Charity Commission and does indeed have an endowment (albeit of only £15k as of 2022). Robminchin (talk) 23:54, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for providing the links to their financial statements and looking into this deeper. This does seem to make it slightly trickier however if they do only have limited endowments which see little movement over the years then it should be manageable. I am of the same opinion of your third paragraph regarding how endowments are currently identified.

Regarding the issue of different reporting timeframes, it looks like this is already the case for some individual Cambridge Colleges and this issue has not been raised previously. I am of the personal belief that if the endowment figure is still presented for the same year, a difference of a few months is acceptable. The matter of when they are published would again make this logistically slightly trickier, but manageable. Currently, the aggregated accounts of the colleges of Oxford are published months after the main annual report is published in December.

Nevertheless, I am still open to the argument of standardising for all universities rather than making special exceptions for Oxford, Cambridge and Durham. Currently, Oxford and Cambridge are also different than other universities because their consolidated and group figures are represented rather than their university and college figures only. This enlargens their endowment figures even further by a few tens of millions. I would rather not use the consolidated/group figure for consistency's sake, but I did not want to create confusion by not following the decisions of previous editors. Would you prefer to use HESA figures for these three institutions? EmyRussell (talk) 02:33, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@EmyRussell It was exceedingly challenging and time-consuming for me to compile endowments for all of Cambridge's colleges. Unlike Oxford, Cambridge doesn't publish consolidated endowment figure for all its 31 colleges so I had to go through 31 financial statements annually, update each college's endowment, and add up all figures. I went through this exercise last year for Cambridge as well and it was painful, but I thought if Oxford has a total endowment figure that includes its colleges Cambridge should probably have a figure too.

Also added a blurb today specifying SORP's endowment definition. I will probably add a few sentences about importance of putting the endowment in context of an institution's total reserve. Judging from some of the comments above, I am far from the only person confused by how low some of these figures are (other than Oxford and Cambridge of course). I would also recommend adding a blurb to the financial endowment page about UK accounting practice (?) Might do that in the next few days if I have time. Wealthofnation (talk) 13:02, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

It is an appreciated effort, I am grateful that Oxford makes the task easier by providing aggregated figures. Would you be open to doing this again for the 2023 figures? EmyRussell (talk) 01:23, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I updated the Colleges of the University of Cambridge page. If I only count the endowment reserve according to SORP, the aggregated value is 4,665. Trinity College alone accounts for over 2 billion (!!) I might have counted all of restricted last year (?) I would just make last year's number n/a. I'll go through all the numbers again to make sure I've counted everything correctly. Wealthofnation (talk) 03:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Seems that Oxford colleges have much of its reserves classified as endowment, whereas Cambridge colleges have much of its reserves in the unrestricted pool. This results in Cambridge colleges having a much higher net worth than Oxford colleges (aggregated) but a lower restricted endowment. Cambridge colleges' net reserves are around >9 billion. Wealthofnation (talk) 03:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I have updated the Colleges of the University of Cambridge page. Figures should be up-to-date as of 2023 FY based on SORP calculation. Wealthofnation (talk) 06:15, 10 July 2024 (UTC)