Abilene Christian University is giving Ivy League endowments a run for their money in the market — SkimNews
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- Abilene Christian University posted a 13.6% 10-year return through June 2026 and a 10.9% 20-year average, both well above its 70/30 global stocks-bonds benchmark's 9.1% and 6.8%, respectively
- Yale University's $44.1 billion endowment returned 9.4% over the decade through June 2025, per its most recent disclosure — ACU's roughly $1 billion portfolio surpassed the $1 billion assets milestone
- ACU's Joe Lee, president and CIO of the in-house manager ACIMCO, said the school's edge comes from being small enough to pursue $100 million funds that larger endowments ignore as immaterial
- Reed College ($885 million endowment) and Colby College ($1.4 billion, 18.2% in FY 2026) also beat Yale, Harvard (7.7%), and Columbia (7.8%) on multi-year returns
- Anna Dunn Tabke of Leita Advisory warned the comparisons are uneven: the 10-year top-5% threshold for endowments jumped from about 8.45% to roughly 10.5% in a single year, with best performers earning nearly 19.5% and bottom 5% under 4%
- Keith Sauls of Farther Finance said the small-school lead is largely timing rather than model superiority, and large endowments historically beat smaller peers by 1 to 1.5 percentage points annually
- SpaceX's June IPO lifted returns for endowments — including some small schools using outsourced managers — that already held pre-IPO shares, per Tabke
Why it matters: Tabke's data shows the 10-year top-5% bar nearly doubled its typical annual jump in a single year, meaning recent small-school outperformance may be a fiscal-year timing artifact — catching SpaceX's June IPO or avoiding illiquid private equity that hasn't paid out for three years — rather than a structural edge that Yale's 300-year-old illiquidity tolerance will let it match going forward.
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