The 30 richest colleges in America

University endowments support a school's operating budget and help it invest in its future, from providing scholarships and financial aid to funding research and other initiatives. The richest colleges, frequently the most prestigious, can offer more of these opportunities to its students and community, giving them a leg up in recruitment and helping them burnish their academic reputation.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a US government organization that collects and analyzes education data, provided Business Insider with the most recent figures on US college endowments (the fiscal year ending in October 2014). It also provided its most recent data on the annual cost for a student to attend each college while living on campus.

Harvard University isn't just one of the top schools in the country academically, it also has the largest endowment of any American college with $36 billion - that's $13 billion more than the second-richest school, Yale University.

The following 30 colleges all have endowments of more than $2.9 billion, making them the richest in America.