SINGAPORE - The National University of Singapore (NUS) has shed some light on its $9.5 billion reserves, saying that about $230 million in investment returns from its endowment funds and from non-endowed donations is spent on operating expenditure for education, bursaries and research in the financial year that ended in March last year.

To be specific, $5.9 billion of its $9.5 billion reserves is in endowment funds. This means that the principal sum in the endowment cannot be touched, only the income generated from investing the sum can be used.