In recent years, some climate activists have called on colleges and universities to divest themselves of stocks held in oil and natural gas companies. In this context, this study analyzes the performance of American college and university endowments based on their asset allocations, with special reference to the returns from oil and natural gas industry stocks. We tracked the returns of the major asset classes held by college and university endowments over the most recent year (June 2010-June 2011), the most recent five-year period (June 2006-June 2011), and the most recent ten-year period (June 2001-June 2011). Depending on the period, different classes of assets produced relatively higher returns for college and university endowments. However, over all three periods, U.S. shares of oil and natural gas companies outpaced both the overall performance of these endowments and every other asset class examined here.Over the five-year period 2006-2011, for example, fixed income securities and distressed debt far outperformed all U.S. equities, foreign equities, and real estate securities. However, the oil and gas company stocks held by colleges and universities produced average annual returns of 7.9 percent, compared to average annual five-year returns of 2.9 percent for all U.S. stocks, 2.0 percent for global equities, 6.5 percent for bonds, 1.6 percent for real estate securities, 0.0 percent for commodities, 4.7 percent for distressed debt, and 2.0 percent for three-month Treasury bills. Similarly, over the ten-year period 2001-2011, real estate, distressed debt, commodities and foreign equities far outperformed all U.S. equities, fixed income instruments, and Treasury bills. However, oil and natural gas company stocks held by colleges and universities produced average annual ten-year returns of 11.5 percent, compared to 2.7 percent for all U.S. stocks, 6.1 percent for global equities, 5.7 percent for bonds, 10.4 percent for real estate, 6.6 percent for commodities, 9.4 percent for distressed debt, and 2.1 percent for three-month Treasury bills. And over the most recent year when this analysis was performed, June 2010-June 2011, real estate securities, all U.S. equities and foreign equities outperformed bonds, distressed debt, and cash and Treasury bills. However, oil and natural gas company stock produced returns of 52.8 percent, while the returns on all U.S. publically-traded stocks were 30.7 percent, foreign equities returned 30.3 percent, bonds generated 3.9 percent, real estate-based securities returned 35.2 percent, commodities produced returns of 25.9 percent, distressed debt generated 11.8 percent, and three-month Treasuries returned 0.2 percent.