The 20 wealthiest private universities and colleges in America

• America's top private universities are fantastically wealthy.
• Using data from the Department of Education, we found the 20 private colleges and universities with the highest-valued endowments in 2017, the most recent period for which data is available.
• Harvard University's endowment had assets worth about $35.7 billion, landing it the top spot on the list.
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In addition to being world-class research and educational institutions, America's top private universities are also fantastically wealthy.

The Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System assembles statistics on thousands of institutions of higher learning in the US. One of the data points published is the value of assets in private university endowments.

As described by Investopedia, endowments are made up of "money or other financial assets that are donated to universities or colleges" that is then invested in order to build up long-term financial reserves and fund ongoing scholarships, research, and other activities.

As the Investopedia article notes, even though many university endowments are under strict guidelines on what percentage of the funds can be spent in any year, some of the wealthier schools have such highly valued endowments that a small share "can equal a large sum of money."

Even with supplemental funding from their massive endowments, sticker-price tuition at many elite colleges and universities remains very high and continues to grow. Despite rising costs, however, a recent New York Fed study pointed out that, on average, a college degree is still a solid investment with a good average long-run rate of return.

Here are the 20 private nonprofit universities and colleges with the biggest endowments, as measured by total value of assets at the start of the 2017 fiscal year, the most recent period for which data is available, along with their location and the year they were founded, according to the schools' websites: