Yale’s endowment returned 8.9 percent in the 2010 fiscal year, the University announced this morning.

After endowment spending, the fund grew 2.5 percent, rising from $16.3 billion in 2009 to $16.7 billion this summer.

The gain is in line with what administrators said they had expected. It falls short of the 13.3-percent average return of other endowments tracked by Wilshire Associates, a California-based investment consulting firm, but it recovers some of the $7 billion the endowment lost last year.

Those figures include an investment return of $1.4 billion, expenses of $1.1 billion and gifts of $136 million.

The results are lower than at Harvard’s endowment, which increased 11 percent this year, and at Columbia’s, which jumped 17 percent.

Although Yale trails both schools this year, it has outperformed both in the long term, according to the release: It produced an average annual return of 8.9 percent over the last decade, beating Harvard’s 7 percent.