Director: Daniel C. Levy

Big Endowments at the Top

(Entry by Daniel C. Levy)

PROPHE Summary:

The building of endowments at a number of higher education institutions has reached epic heights. Related are the huge fund-raising campaigns. Stanford and Columbia universities have announced campaigns to raise 4 billion dollars or more. The bulk of the money often comes from a small percentage of the gifts, the huge gifts. These campaigns have their critics. One of their perspectives is that such campaigns have become something of a game and are largely about status and getting ahead of competitor institutions.

For the full story see Inside Higher Ed, October 12, 2006, "Endowment Envy" by Scott Jaschik.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/12/billions

PROPHE Observation:

The astounding sums in question keep growing and, as they do, they underscore the uniqueness of the U.S. No other country boasts anything resembling these figures, even as the idea of attracting such private funds becomes more and more popular. At the same time the gap between leading and other institutions widens within the U.S. itself.. For the most part the U.S. giants are private, elite, research universities, yet we see that the public University of Virginia stands not far behind the private leaders, with a 3 billion dollar campaign. In any case, the huge sums have a large impact on the private-public balance of institutional income. Whatever one makes of the phenomenon there remains the most obvious point: leading institutions, led by a group of private universities, are raking in unprecedented sums of private money that can be used for a wide range of activities.