Dartmouth Endowment Returns 8.4% in Fiscal 2024

The Dartmouth College investment office this month announced the school’s endowment achieved an 8.4% return in fiscal 2024, the period ending June 30. The assets of the fund grew to $8.3 billion and distributed nearly $430 million to support the college’s operating budget.

The fund’s annualized returns over the previous five, 10 and 20 years, as of the end of the fiscal year, stood at 10.9%, 9.4% and 9.5%. respectively.

“Dartmouth is fortunate to have a talented investment team capable of generating sustainable long-term returns that not only benefit Dartmouth community members today, but ensure that future generations will have access to the same world class education, resources, and transformative experiences,” said Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at the meeting.

The endowment’s 2024 returns far outshined its returns last year, when the college returned 1.6%, among the lowest of its peers (in 2023, Dartmouth ranked 53rd out of 62 “mega endowments,” as classified and tracked by NEPC LLC). Last year, alternative investments—particularly private equity allocations—posted poor returns in general, and elite endowments, which often have very large allocations to the private markets, performed badly as a result.

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Among the eight Ivy League institutions, Brown and Columbia had the highest returns in fiscal 2023, at 12.7% and 4.7%, respectively. Princeton University’s endowment lost 1.7%, and Dartmouth edged the University of Pennsylvania’s 1.3% to rank sixth.

While Dartmouth’s most recent asset allocation is not public, as of the end of fiscal 2023, Dartmouth allocated 40% of its portfolio to private equity and venture capital, 24% to hedge funds, 21% to equities, 10% to real assets and 5% to cash.

Despite 2022 and 2023 being weak years for private markets returns, private markets have outperformed most other asset classes in the long term. The 10-year annualized return of Dartmouth’s private equity and venture capital portfolio was 20.6% through fiscal 2023, followed by real assets at 10% and global equities at 9.2%.

In the fund’s 2023 endowment report, Dartmouth cited private equity and venture capital as key drivers of the funds’ long-term performance. The first of the Ivy League to report in 2024, Dartmouth’s returns could provide insight into how the portfolios of other alternatives-heavy elite university endowments performed last year.