Effectiveness development and evaluation of the endowment funds’ investment activities of Russian universities

The article reveals the endowment funds’ formation issues of universities both in Russia and abroad, and compares their quantitative indicators. The review of publications by various scientists on the formation and use of endowment funds given in the article allows us to assess the importance of this type of endowment capital and to clarify their role in the universities’ activities. The article also pays attention to the sources of replenishment and spending directions of endowment funds of Russian universities in comparison with foreign universities. The paper presents a modern practices description of using endowment capital, the authors indicate the changes that have occurred in this way in the practice of Russian universities. As a problem, the authors of the article consider approaches to assessing the use effectiveness of endowment funds. In particular, the article calculates the endowment funds’ effectiveness of Russian universities using the Hansmann model. The result of the calculations showed the endowment funds’ effectiveness of the universities selected for the study, but, at the same time pointed out at difficulties in selecting the information necessary for calculations and serious differences in approaches to the endowment capital use of the universities themselves.