evidence: Harvard boasts the largest endowment in the world sitting at $50.7 billion in 2023 — larger than the economies of 120 countries. Yet the past decade has seen lackluster investment performance in comparison to its peers, sparking concerns over management transparency and the University’s ability to fund operations. Harvard has remained the wealthiest institution in higher education after it benefited from tremendous returns from the 1990s to the mid-2000s, when the endowment grew by over $21 billion in 15 years. During that period, the University managed to outpace a traditional 60/40 investment portfolio of U.S. stocks and bonds by 6 percent a year and beat top Wall Street hedge funds. [...] But excluding 2021, Harvard’s endowment performance averaged over 2018-2023 was marginally better than Princeton, Stanford, and MIT — second only to Yale.