The American stock market soared during fiscal year 2021, despite the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. College endowments, including Notre Dame’s, saw annual returns up sharply from the previous year.
The Notre Dame endowment pool’s 53.2 percent investment return was the second-highest one-year return in its history. It grew by nearly $7 billion in overall assets. By the June 30, 2021, end of the fiscal year, the endowment pool had a market value of $20.3 billion. (This excludes assets held on behalf of religious affiliates.)
A year earlier, Notre Dame reported a fiscal-year end market value of $13.3 billion for the endowment pool, with a one-year investment return of 7.4 percent.
Notre Dame’s results for 2021 were consistent with endowment growth for American colleges large and small. For the 12 months ending June 30, college and university endowments generated an overall average return of 30.6 percent, up sharply from a 1.8 percent overall average return in fiscal year 2020,
according to the latest NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments,
released in February.