[photonthug]

70% of 53 billion is restricted, but presumably they still make significant money from interest/investment on that money. And IDK, but I assume it's all tax-free too, since the alumni probably wrote a big chunk of the tax code. Are these profits considered part of the endowment too and with similar restrictions? If unrestricted, is the available student aid commensurate with that, or does it disappear into operations and/or dean salary?

[ThrowawayR2]

Given that interest/investment revenue from restricted endowments is the entire point of the donation, yes, that revenue is restricted.

As for tax treatment, why not just google it yourself instead of assuming? In the US, a tax was added under the Trump administration on revenue from university endowments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_tax#Federal_changes_...

[photonthug]

Well I don't really enjoy researching tax law, just criticizing it ;) But it does look like my intuition was pretty reasonable here. The endowments have been taxed for 6 of the 387 years of since the university was founded. Not that I really want to see that money going to the government.. this also won't necessarily help anything unless it's actually going towards to student-aid.