Dive Brief
-
Charitable giving to American colleges and universities grew by 6.3 percent to $43.6 billion last year, reports The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Gifts of at least $100 million made up 1.6 percent of all giving in 2017.
-
The fundraising figure comes from a Council to Aid to Education survey and represents the biggest sum ever recorded since the survey began in 1957.
-
Harvard University brought in the most charitable contributions with $1.28 billion in giving, followed by Stanford and Cornell universities. Only a few public universities, including Ohio State and Indiana universities, made the list of top 20 universities in terms of charitable giving.
Dive Insight
Even as endowments soar to new heights, wealthy colleges continued to command the attention of big donors. Comparatively, little money flowed to community and public colleges that serve middle-income students and lower-income learners trying to enter the middle class. Inside Higher Ed reported that 60 colleges, out of roughly 3,900 colleges, took in nearly half of charitable giving in 2016.
The fact that American donors see the value of supporting higher education is good news; however, the inequality highlighted by the survey is hard to ignore, especially questions around class and social mobility. Wealthy colleges overwhelmingly enroll well-off students.
Low-income students are even increasingly less common at the nation’s flagship public colleges — a circumstance that helped fuel the new tax on wealthy college endowments. However, arguing against the new tax, higher education economist Roger Ferguson told the Wall Street Journal that endowments insured the longevity of institutions.
