The USA is home to the most advanced higher education system in the world, which is directly connected to the reason why the USA is home to the largest economy in the world, which boasts some of the most advanced companies in the world.

We all depend on companies like IBM, Intel, Ford, BTPrivateWires, General Electric, Berkshire Hathaway, Facebook, Walmart, Pfizer, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Apple, Exxon Mobile etc etc.

I was reading this website [http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/Endowment%20Files/2013NCSEEndowmentMarketValuesRevisedJan232014.pdf] that shows the largest 849 US and Canadian University Investment Funds.

This is a snapshot of the top 30.

Harvard University   $32,334,293,000
Yale University    $20,780,000,000
University of Texas System  $20,448,313,000
Stanford University   $18,688,868,000
Princeton University   $18,200,433,000
Massachusetts Institute of Technology $11,005,932,000
Texas A&M University   $8,732,010,000
University of Michigan   $8,382,311,000
Columbia University   $8,197,880,000
Northwestern University   $7,883,323,000
University of Pennsylvania  $7,741,396,000
University of Notre Dame  $6,856,301,000
University of Chicago   $6,668,974,000
University of California  $6,377,379,000
Duke University    $6,040,973,000
Emory University   $5,816,046,000
Washington University in St. Louis $5,651,860,000
Cornell University   $5,272,228,000
University of Virginia   $5,166,660,000
Rice University    $4,836,728,000
University of Southern California $3,868,355,000
Dartmouth College   $3,733,596,000
Vanderbilt University   $3,673,434,000
Ohio State University   $3,149,169,000
Johns Hopkins University  $2,987,298,000
University of Pittsburgh  $2,975,896,000
Pennsylvania State University  $2,956,803,000
New York University   $2,949,000,000
University of Minnesota & Foundations $2,757,476,000
Brown University   $2,669,948,000

Total:    $246,802 Million = $246 Billion

The US top 30 Universities have total investment funds of $246 Billion, that is just shy of a quarter of a Trillion US Dollars. (a bit of trivia, that is about 1.5% of the total US National Debt) Education is the mechanism of wealth creation and innovation.