The College provided data on its endowment to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finances on Feb. 22 in response to an earlier Senate inquiry. The Committee is currently seeking data from 136 U.S. colleges with endowments of $5 million or more in preparation for possible future legislation that would regulate the endowment spending of colleges and universities.
The inquiry, written by the two highest-ranking Senators on the Committee, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Committee Ranking Member Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, consisted of 11 multi-part questions that address issues handled by several different college offices, according to Heather Kim, the director of institutional research who coordinated the College's response.
"We tried to be as thorough as possible, even though the process was long and difficult," she said. "We completed the response in under a month, though."
The data the College provided includes the number of students enrolled over the last ten years, the cost of tuition and room and board, the amount of aid provided for students, details on the endowment growth and the structure of the College's governance.
"Some of the questions seemed unclear, but I think we interpreted and answered them correctly," Kim said. "From what I noticed, the peer institutions addressed them similarly."
Harvard University, Princeton University and Stanford University have already filed their responses and posted them on their web sites.
The College's response can be accessed on the Dartmouth web site.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Finances is now beginning to analyze the universities' data, Baucus' aide said in an interview for The Dartmouth.
"We hope the Committee will get a sense of how the schools are using their endowments," he said.
The College's endowment, which has grown by more than 50 percent over the last ten years -- from $1.5 billion to $3.8 billion -- is currently ranked as the twenty-first largest in the nation. Harvard's endowment of $34.9 billion is the largest.
The College's top endowment expenditure is financial aid, which indicates that the College actively addresses the nationwide issue of rising costs of higher education, said Adam Keller the executive vice president for finance and administration. The College currently spends 21 percent of its endowment on financial aid.
"I think this data would reassure the Committee that we, too, are concerned with the growing cost of education," Keller said.
The Committee has indicated in the past that it may take steps to introduce legislation to regulate the schools' endowment. Keller said that there is no need to further restrict the College's endowment, because the majority of it is already occupied.
Seventy-eight percent of the College's endowment is already permanently allocated. Harvard has a higher percentage of restricted funds, while Princeton and Stanford's percentages are lower.
"I hope that the committee will now better understand how complicated the endowment structure is," Keller said.
According to Keller, the Committee is not likely to take any further actions that may impact the College.
"We've been doing fine without their restrictions," he said in an interview with The Dartmouth earlier this year.
The initiative is only one of many issues that the committee currently handles, Baucus' aide said.
"The Committee has not made any definite plans as to what further steps, if any, will be taken," he added.
