“Chairman Hatch is reviewing the responses and will be reaching out, if necessary, to clarify any ambiguous replies,” said Aaron Fobes, a spokesman for Hatch.

Brown and at least two others provided no estimates on fees paid to outside managers. In its response, Brown said such fees are typically embedded in the net asset values of the investments.

The school like many others did disclose internal costs, such as staffing and overhead, to run their endowments. For Brown’s $3.1 billion fund, the cost was 0.28 percent of assets for fiscal 2015. Its endowment returned 5.7 percent in the year ended June 30.

Princeton University and Harvard joined several universities in giving an estimate for management fees paid to outside investors but not performance charges. Yale University, the No. 2 endowment with $25.6 billion in assets, said it paid 1.2 percent of its fund’s average market value in external fees in fiscal 2015. The endowment returned 11.5 percent in the year ended June 30.


University of Pennsylvania reported a range of 0.06 to 2.25 percent in management fees to 320 partnerships for different asset classes.

Harvard Studies Fees

Harvard told lawmakers it recently studied the cost difference between its system of managing some money in-house compared with giving its entire $37.6 billion endowment to outsiders. The study found that the hybrid model saved money for Harvard: internal management costs below 0.75 percent of assets versus 1 to 2 percent paid to outsiders on average.

Spokespeople for Harvard and Yale declined to comment beyond what they reported to Congress.

Stanford, which runs a $22.2 billion fund, was one of at least eight schools to give a percentage range it paid in performance fees, without revealing the actual cost. The school said its private equity partners typically charge an annual fee of 1 to 2 percent of assets, and an incentive fee equal to 20 percent of net profits above a return hurdle.

“The majority of our external managers fall in between those two endpoints,” said Stanford, whose endowment returned 7 percent in fiscal 2015.