@CaliDad2020 In #770, I see 2 links but they look the same? Do you have another link for the amount of alumni giving in millions? The information is interesting about the number of wealthy alumni. The publics are kind of bunched together, with Virginia at #11, UCB at #14, and Michigan at #15.
With publics, some of the alumni giving dollars probably needs to be controlled for size. UT Austin at #7 on your list is much larger at 39,523 undergrads and 11, 790 graduate students. UCLA has 29,633 undergrads and 13,606 graduate students, Michigan is 28,395 undergrads and 15, 230 graduate students, UCB is 27,126 undergrads and 10,439 graduate students. University of Virginia is the smallest of any with 16, 483 undergrads and 7249 graduate students.
Privates have historically had better luck with the big donations . I agree that Increased alumni support , “big gifts,” will be very helpful going forward for public universities.
@MWDadOf3 You could probably just look at long-term Football rankings and alumni financial support at a bunch of schools and see how they correlate.
But UCLA, for instance, has no lack of interest in its football and, of course, the interest is basketball is higher than most schools.
I’d guess the numbers have more to do with personal emotional investment. It seems to me that Michigan grads, for instance, have much more personal attachment to their school, for whatever reason. Not as familiar with Texas/Austin, but it also seems to me Penn State and UVa grads have stronger “alumni identities” although I don’ t know how their donation rates compare.
And again, this is a small part of the pie, but it does seem like there could be success in that area - I would say more by courting alums with “naming rights” kind of money, but also across the greater network.
Alumni giving is important, but it’s only provides a portion of the total voluntary support to Higher Education.
In 2014 (Dollars in Millions):
Total Voluntary Support: $37,450 Source:
Alumni: $9,850
Non-alumni Individuals: $6,500
Corporations: $5,750
Foundations: $11,200
Other Organizations: $4,150
Privates are very good at winning funding from these (non-alumni) sources. These foundations and corporations are used to funding private universities, so it’s a battle for Publics to win over these groups. You have to change the mindset (at the university and foundations/corporations).
UCLA indeed does seem to have a better track record of athletic success in the two main revenue sports than Berkeley. And indeed, per the numbers you provided, they’ve done a little better on alumni giving than Berkeley despite the reputation (I think) as the #2 UC to Berkeley’s #1. Not sure what controlling for undergraduate & graduate population, alumni base size and other factors would do.
Anyways, even UCLA, despite a pretty strong record decades ago has, I think, not been notably successful in these sports in the last 10-15 years or so. I would suspect that the average Texan in general (not only alumni) or Michigan resident is far more connected to the success of the football program there (interested in it, watches the games, wears the gear, etc), than the average Californian to that of UCLA or Berkeley. And I suspect that connection is very helpful to fundraisers at Texas and Michigan.
I’m not saying it’s the only reason anyone would ever give, nor that fundraising in the absence of athletic success is hopeless, only that it’s likely a big factor, and the lack of notable athletic success and legacy is a non-trivial headwind for a public like Berkeley.
Yes, naming rights are a big deal . Here’s an example at UVa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Jones_Arena
Virginia Tech’s new engineering building was initially going to be called the Signature Engineering Building, until a big alumni donor stepped forward . It was then renamed the Goodwin Engineering Building. The money is definitely out there.
I believe this is referring to this announcement from spring 2015
So, it looks like nonresident enrollment was capped at Fall 2014 levels at UCB and UCLA (but not the other UCs). But this doesn’t help CA residents at all.
To see the problem, we just have to do the math. Here it is (I think the numbers are more or less ok)
[ul]
[] The cost of instruction at UCB per student is about $25,000 per year.
[] On average, CA residents pay about $10,000 in tuition and fees … a little lower than the $13,500 charge for 2016 because of financial aid costs. So each CA resident needs about a $15,000 subsidy from the state … maybe a bit more since I’m estimating the average financial aid cost.
[li] Nonresidents pay about $40,000 in tuition and fees. So each nonresident generates about $15,000 in extra revenue.[/li][/ul]
You can see that every nonresident admitted provides enough additional revenue to pay for one extra resident. So, admitting an extra 1,300 nonresidents to the fall freshman class gave Berkeley enough money to admit an additional 1,300 CA residents.
Without additional money, capping the nonresident enrollments doesn't help increase the number of residents. It's just a dumb decision to appease grandstanding politicians and uniformed voters.
Suppose you want Berkeley to reduce nonresident enrollments back to 2005 levels and give their spots to residents.
In Fall 2015, Berkeley enrolled 20,754 CA residents, 3406 OOS, 3336 International.
In Fall 2005, Berkeley enrolled 21,261 CA residents, 1559 OOS, 662 International.
That's a swap of 4,521 spaces. But you need an extra $30,000 per year to do each swap ($40,000-$10,000). That's $135,000,000 per year that you need to come up with. You'd have to increase the state educational appropriation by about 40%. By the way, Berkeley is already making budget cuts because they're projecting about a $150 million operating deficit even with the current enrollment allocations.
If you want to understand current policy, you shouldn’t look at total enrollment numbers because it takes a class about 4-5 years to work their way through graduation. Total enrollments therefore lag actual policy.
You also shouldn’t look at admissions numbers because yields are very different between in-state and OOS students. The universities are targeting enrollments when they’re allocating budgets and seats. They can use things like waitlists to fine-tune too.
Instead, you should look at new admits.
Here are the figures for fall freshman enrollments for Berkeley and UCLA
CA RESIDENTS OOS International
Year UCB UCLA UCB UCLA UCB UCLA
2005 3763 4180 239 156 103 86
2006 3822 4377 229 296 106 136
2007 3872 4209 225 250 128 104
2008 3665 4253 242 352 354 129
2009 3878 4010 153 336 325 126
2010 3044 4035 553 318 512 283
2011 2948 4854 834 377 661 594
2012 3042 3995 592 607 528 1018
2013 3091 4107 767 940 848 650
2014 3851 4143 867 920 748 701
2015 3945 4086 918 956 687 636
<a href="I%20couldn't%20find%20spring%20admit%20data,%20but%20my%20understanding%20is%20that%20the%20resident/nonresident%20breakdown%20has%20been%20pretty%20stable.%20There's%20also%20a%20large%20transfer%20cohort,%20but%20there%20are%20almost%20no%20OOS%20students%20who%20transfer%20to%20a%20UC.">/code</a>
Looking at this data, I see that UCB decreased the number of CA resident fall freshman admits from 2010 to 2013, but it's back to where it was. The data for UCLA shows that they really didn't decrease the number of resident slots during the recession very much at all.
The latest data shows that the number of CA residents is now back to where it was prior to the recession. The net effect of everything is that they've enrolled more nonresidents in order to use the extra revenue to balance their budgets and fund the CA resident enrollment that they have.
Auburn is in the middle of a billion dollar campaign. Many schools are doing that kind of thing. UVa had a 3 billion dollar giving campaign in 2006 and surpassed that goal by 2009. Giving and totals in a given year may depend somewhat on what cycle of fundraising an individual school is in the middle of. Cornell (private with only a small public component) had a 4.75 billion campaign started in 2006 and raised over 4 billion by 2015. There are a lot of wealthy people out there! Even giving smaller amounts though adds up.
In terms of things like foundations, @Gator88NE , Not sure if this is what your are referring to but this lists foundations, like the UVA Foundation and Jefferson Scholars Foundation. http://www.virginia.edu/treasury/uvafoundations.html How many of the foundations at privates are non-alumni based ?
I believe lots of publics have been looking to corporate partnerships for some time.
Cornell is mostly private (and an Ivy League school to boot).
UVA is a public, but probably resembles privates in some ways that UCB does not - more hallowed traditions, much more iconic founder, more beautiful and landscaped grounds, bit more of an “air” of a private. And, while I don’t know the figures for sure, I suspect Virginia started cutting funding to UVA deeper and earlier than California did to UCB, lessening the public ties. UVA has also long accepted a high % of high achieving OOS students, including a healthy slug from New York, New Jersey, and the like, where there are both large numbers of wealthy individuals, and I would guess, a stronger tradition of support for one’s alma mater than is typical in California.
Yes, Virginia acts somewhat more like a highly selective private university in many ways, in that its typical enrolled class has a higher percentage of non-Virginia residents, and a lower percentage of high-financial-need students, both characteristics that are financially helpful to the school. Virginia also lists “relation with alumnus” (legacy preference) as “very important” in admissions, as reported at http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1571 .
To come at it from a slightly different direction:
It’s easy for those around a university under financial pressure to say “hey, let’s raise more money from the alumni”. It’s easier than thinking about making hard cuts to teaching, research, or financial aid, or the alternatives of more state support (for publics, but not easy to achieve), or higher tuition.
But sometimes its almost trivialized - “just milk the alumni a little harder and all the problems are resolved!” (exaggerating for effect). I suspect that most large universities are already fundraising pretty hard, thank you very much, and that while there is likely room for improvement (as there is in pretty much any corner of any large institution), that, in general, one should not expect or rely on increased alumni giving, nor treat it as easier or surer to accomplish, than any of the usual cuts or fee increases or the like that one might use to address finances.
Shorter version: One should assume that the UCs are already fundraising to a solid extent, and that incremental gains here are no silver bullet for overall financial pressures.
Like Virginia, Auburn also has a high percentage of out-of-state students (43%), has a low percentage of Pell grant students (13%), and considers “relationship with alumnus” in admissions (“important”).
UC’s are clearly fundraising to a solid extent, as evidenced in the link that @CaliDad2020 provided. Here is an example from another public, Indiana University, another university in the middle of a big fundraising campaign. They also have corporate gifts from companies like Eli Lilly and also the Vera Bradley Foundation. As @Gator88NE mentions, they are looking beyond just alumni donations. http://news.iu.edu/releases/iu/2015/09/bicentennial-campaign-indiana-university%20.shtml
And yes, @MWDadOf3 , Virginia has been addressing the budget issues and relationship to its colleges for years. Here is about the restructuring and the section about History mentions the funding volatility. http://www.virginia.edu/restructuring/
While 2011 is a strange outlier, UCLA lost, from the 2007 “pre-recession” benchmark:
08: -134
09: -335
10: -392
in 11 they offset +410 of those lost seat
12 - lost another -357
13: -602
14: -256
15: -44
Net loss of 1710 resident seats in 8 years by my calcs.
By the way, I first heard about the challenge Public universities had with private foundations, from a speech/talk Robert Birgeneau (Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley from 2004 to 2013) gave to the UF faculty (available online), earlier this year. He described how they had to fight to overcome the belief, when trying to win funding from different foundations, that they (UCB and Public Universities in general) didn’t need the funding, since the state was financially supporting the school.
Once they could get past this barrier, UCB was much more competitive in winning these grants from the foundations.
Most of Dr. Birgeneau’s talk was around the financial challenges facing the public research university, since he’s the current co-chair on the Lincoln Project.
@Gator88NE , In a brief search of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation database, both UCB and the University of Virginia got numerous grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One I randomly looked at for Virginia was $16 million plus in 2010 for something related to global health, as well as many smaller grants. Most schools are probably looking to private foundations as well.
Yes, I see you just now addressed this about the fact that publics are getting more grants from private foundations these days. I thought because you initially cited only 3 privates that got grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, you were implying that publics were not getting these same kinds of grants at all.
A grant from the Gates Foundation for “something related to global health” has, I suspect, little net effect on the money available for an institution to provide undergraduate education. I suspect that the bulk of such money is for funding researcher salaries (and POSSIBLY medicines and supplies) for global health. While there may be a spillover, to SOME extent, to general university overhead and some of the affected professors may teach a class or two to undergrads, I would think that, in general, the effect of a $1M grant for global health, in terms of supporting undergraduate education, is far less than a $1M gift from a wealthy alum, a $1M increase in general state support, or a $1M increase in tuition revenues received, after a tuition hike.