McGill University - Finances

Finances

As a public university, McGill is not as dependent on its endowment for operating revenue as some of its international peers. The McGill endowment only provides approximately 10 per cent of the school's annual operating revenues. Nonetheless, McGill's endowment rests within the top 10 percent of all North American post-secondary institutions' endowments. While McGill's conservative investment policy has protected it from the more substantial losses experienced at many other universities during the market crisis of 2008–2009, it still faced a 20% endowment decline from approximately $920 million to $740 million. Valued at $21,633 per student, the university maintains one of the largest endowments among Canadian universities on a per-student basis.

In an open letter to faculty and students, Heather Munroe-Blum wrote: "The next few years do not promise to be easy. But in facing this challenge, McGill has a unique advantage in addition to that of the fundamental progress we have made. This university has lived with restricted resources and uncertainty for almost two hundred years – it is part of our culture. And yet, against this backdrop of hardship, we have always retained our commitment to excellence. We are one of the world’s great universities. This will not change. In my installation speech in the spring of 2003, I said McGill "punches above its weight." We will continue to do so. In order to stay the course, we must now move with confidence, pride, excitement and discipline to seize every opportunity to put McGill in an ideal position to leap forward with the inevitable recovery."