And the interest earned from those accounts goes straight back into those accounts. That’s the whole point of endowing them. They are typically programs that wouldn’t exist without the endowed fund, or scholarship/financial aid dollars (in Princeton’s case, entirely need based financial aid since they don’t do scholarships). The endowment is wholly irrelevant to this discussion.

Where other university’s thrive is unrestricted giving (IE: Here’s a check made out to Temple for $400,000, do what you want with it). Temple is really bad at getting unrestricted donors, especially with the amount of alumni out there. That’s why the majority of Temple’s revenue is from tuition. .