Todge, I appreciate the effort you put in, but I had already acknowledge that Rice wasn't to the point Harvard was. One thing I will point out is that you overstated Rice's shortfall by a little over a hundred million. You have the research expense, but you don't put the research grants on the other side.

Second thing I would point out, throwing out the impact of the 2008 crash in a vacuum is a little misleading (at best) without pointing out that, even with a year like that, your average return over time will far exceed the 4-5% range, especially when you have billions to invest. With that kind of capital you have access to investment vehicles and private placements not enjoyed by the population at large. Harvard, over the longer term, has averaged an 11% return on their portfolio (over 15% last year).

Here's one way to think about it. For the 36 billion Harvard has they could buy two large regional banks for cash based on current market capitalization, BB&T and Fifth Third. Combined those banks have net income of about 3.7 billion, and that's in a tough banking environment. As rates move up, and those banks return to normalized ROA and ROE, they will be throwing off 5 billion a year. That's an income stream in perpetuity that's about 12% return with never touching principal.

Of course Harvard made 5 billion last year without having to assume ownership risk so there's no need to do anything like that.