<p>Not really Hawkette, it goes back to size. Those all have 6,000-17,000 undergrads. Actually, W&M and UVa have low donation rates given their history and their size.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Alex, I think this has been slower to change in California because until very recently the state DID provide generous support to public universities, and because there’s been a tradition—or more recently a fiction—that the UCs are “tuition-free” for state residents. This fostered a mindset that public higher education was something the state was obligated to provide as of right, just like K-12 public education. Even if UC alums were aware that state aid was declining, they tended to respond with anger and resentment towards the state, not charitable contributions to the universities. A gift to the school was seen as conceding the argument about who should pay. Compounding that, California has some of the highest state tax rates in the nation, so many people feel they have paid already, and the state’s just chiseling on what it does with the money.</p>
<p>That point of view needs to change, and fast. Some publics, like Michigan and Virginia, are a little ahead of Berkeley in moving towards a quasi-private model of public higher education. But I think it’s still a huge problem with older generations of alumni who still tend to view public universities as arms of the state, and the state’s responsibility to fund. Asking them to make a charitable contribution to support their alma mater is like asking them to make a charitable contribution to support the state highway patrol or the state judicial system. It just ain’t gonna happen, not because they hold those institutions in low regard, but because they feel they’re already paying through their tax bill.</p>
<p>al,
There probably is some positive correlation between size and giving rate, but it’s not as tight as you might think. Look at the following:</p>
<p>Alumni Giving Rate , # of Undergrads , School</p>
<p>SCHOOLS WITH < 5000 STUDENTS </p>
<p>60.7% , 4981 , Princeton
50.9% , 4147 , Dartmouth
37.3% , 4153 , MIT
33.5% , 3154 , Rice
31.9% , 4476 , Wake Forest
31.8% , 3196 , Brandeis
31.8% , 4876 , Lehigh
31.1% , 921 , Caltech
21.9% , 3044 , Yeshiva
18.5% , 4356 , Case Western
16.6% , 3252 , Worcester
11.5% , 3404 , Pepperdine</p>
<p>SCHOOLS WITH 5000-10,000 STUDENTS </p>
<p>49.7% , 8363 , Notre Dame
41.2% , 5277 , Yale
39.7% , 6678 , Harvard
39.2% , 6496 , Duke
39.0% , 6095 , Brown
38.7% , 9756 , U Penn
36.6% , 6890 , Emory
35.9% , 7495 , Columbia
35.4% , 6985 , Wash U
34.7% , 5680 , Johns Hopkins
34.5% , 6532 , Stanford
32.7% , 5022 , U Chicago
31.3% , 8476 , Northwestern
27.6% , 7092 , Georgetown
24.2% , 6837 , Vanderbilt
23.5% , 5044 , Tufts
23.3% , 9060 , Boston College
22.3% , 7994 , Fordham
21.7% , 5850 , WILLIAM & MARY
20.1% , 5998 , Carnegie Mellon
19.2% , 6749 , Tulane
17.9% , 5355 , U Rochester
16.7% , 6240 , SMU
16.4% , 5394 , Rensselaer</p>
<p>SCHOOLS WITH 10,000-20,000 STUDENTS </p>
<p>39.1% , 16608 , USC
32.0% , 13846 , Cornell
28.9% , 12973 , GEORGIA TECH
28.1% , 14713 , CLEMSON
23.1% , 15208 , U VIRGINIA
22.3% , 17895 , U N CAROLINA
18.8% , 10422 , U Miami
18.5% , 16765 , U CONNECTICUT
18.1% , 13651 , Syracuse
17.9% , 18892 , UC S BARBARA
14.7% , 17427 , U PITTSBURGH
10.2% , 15135 , UC S CRUZ
9.9% , 16384 , U DELAWARE
9.8% , 10590 , George Washington
8.7% , 18534 , Boston University</p>
<p>SCHOOLS WITH 20,000-30,000 STUDENTS </p>
<p>18.4% , 23567 , VIRGINIA TECH
17.6% , 29397 , U WASHINGTON
17.3% , 25994 , U MICHIGAN
15.1% , 28031 , RUTGERS
14.0% , 25467 , U GEORGIA
13.6% , 26536 , UCLA
13.1% , 25151 , UC BERKELEY
12.9% , 20823 , U IOWA
11.7% , 22122 , UC IRVINE
11.7% , 26431 , U MARYLAND
11.2% , 24209 , UC DAVIS
10.6% , 21269 , NYU
7.1% , 22518 , UC SAN DIEGO</p>
<p>SCHOOLS WITH MORE THAN 30,000 STUDENTS </p>
<p>19.7% , 37988 , PENN STATE
19.5% , 30912 , BYU
17.2% , 34654 , U FLORIDA
16.2% , 38430 , TEXAS A&M
15.7% , 31761 , PURDUE
15.7% , 40212 , OHIO STATE
15.5% , 37389 , U TEXAS
15.3% , 36337 , MICHIGAN ST
15.0% , 31626 , INDIANA U
14.7% , 32557 , U MINNESOTA
14.1% , 31417 , U ILLINOIS
12.6% , 30750 , U WISCONSIN</p>
<p>Even here it is hard to know what one is looking at. What do I mean? Well, Tulane is listed as 6,749 students (undergraduate), yet they admit on average 1500 per year, taking out the year after Katrina when they only got about 900. They retain about 90% these days, and don’t take enough transfers to explain the difference. In fact the full time undergrad population is about 5,500. The difference actually is their School of Continuing Studies, i.e. night school mostly, all part time students. They count them as 1/3 full time equivalent each, I believe, and so the final result is the 6,749.</p>
<p>My point is that I imagine the giving rate for part time students that finally graduate is rather less than the “normal” graduate. I also know that many of these schools don’t have part time programs anywhere near the size of Tulane’s. So is the % comparison fair? I have no idea, although my instinct says it is not. To be fair, it should be based on the full time undergrad population, which would make Tulane’s giving rate 23.5%. Of course, one would have to check all the other schools to see what their full time undergrad population is and recalculate for them also. So even this seemingly simple statistic has its flaws.</p>
<p>Hawkette, I never said the correlation was perfect, but there is quite a strong correlation.</p>
<p>Add LACs with 1,000-3,000 students, and the picture will be complete. On average, colleges/universities with 1,000-3,000 students have significantly higher alumni donation rates than universities with 5,000-8,000 students who in turn have significantly higher alumni donation rates (on average) than universities with 10,000-15,000 students who in turn have significantly higher alumni donation rates than universities with over 20,000 students.</p>
<p>And that’s only part of the problem. The other part is the fact that private universities have been soliciting alum far longer than state universities and generally do so more aggresively. </p>
<p>In short, it is not fair to compare alumni donation rates at large public universities to alumni donation rates at smaller private universities.</p>
<p>
Interesting data.</p>
<p>hawkette, excellent work</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065123250-post283.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065123250-post283.html</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Good point, Alexandre. The top-ranked LACs outshine all but a tiny handful of private universities when it comes to alumni giving.</p>
<p>US News top 25-ranked LACs, alumni giving rate, student body:</p>
<ol>
<li>Carleton, 63.3%, 2000</li>
<li>Amherst, 60.1%, 1697</li>
<li>Williams, 59.7%, 2045</li>
<li>Middlebury, 59.3%, 2455</li>
<li>Davidson, 54.3%, 1668</li>
<li>Bowdoin, 54.0%, 1723</li>
<li>Pomona, 50.7%, 1532</li>
<li>Wesleyan, 50.5%, 3149</li>
<li>Wellesley, 48.5%, 2344</li>
<li>Hamilton, 48.2%, 1872</li>
<li>Swarthmore, 47.8%, 1490</li>
<li>Washington & Lee, 47.8%, 2155</li>
<li>Scripps, 47.3%, 972</li>
<li>Haverford, 47.2%, 1169</li>
<li>Colby, 46.8%, 1847</li>
<li>Bates, 43.0%, 1776</li>
<li>Grinnell, 42.9%, 1678</li>
<li>CMC, 41.8%, 1212</li>
<li>Oberlin, 40.8%, 2865</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr, 40.6%, 1745</li>
<li>Colgate, 40.4%, 2844</li>
<li>Mt. Holyoke, 40.0%, 2241</li>
<li>Smith, 39.5%, 3101</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd, 36.0%, 738</li>
<li>Vassar, 32.3%, 2389</li>
<li>US Military Academy, 31.8%, 4553</li>
<li>Colorado College, 29.0%, 2026</li>
<li>US Naval Academy, 22.1%, 4489</li>
</ol>
<p>Set aside the service academies as a special case (they’re “publics,” after all, and besides their alums pay back in other and more important ways). There are 22 schools in this group with an alumni giving rate higher than Harvard, 18 with a giving rate higher than Yale, and 24 with a giving rate higher than Stanford. Conclusion: size matters.</p>
<p>The fund rasing numbers that matter</p>
<p>2009</p>
<p>Stanford University
$785,042,846</p>
<p>Harvard University
$650,625,000</p>
<p>Columbia University
$495,106,753</p>
<p>Yale University
$486,610,483</p>
<p>University of Pennsylvania
$475,957,652</p>
<p>University of California at Los Angeles
$456,654,332</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins University
$448,964,324</p>
<p>University of Wisconsin at Madison
$410,227,266</p>
<p>Cornell University
$409,422,892</p>
<p>University of Southern California
$409,183,101</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At the risk of turning this into a Trojan-esque discussion with sexual innuendos, if size matters it does have to take a backseat to … overall satisfaction. Alumni giving should also show a direct correlation to the capacity of donating and the degree of satisfaction with the education received, and perhaps a perception of having spent precious resources well. Since it would be hard to argue that the LACs listed by Clinton all very high COE, it must be equally hard to argue that the students who attended a LAC are not … satisfied.</p>
<p>It’s much easier to badger 750 graduates per year for money. “I’ll give you $50 just to stop calling”</p>
<p>RE: Post #289</p>
<p>[Top</a> Twenty Universities for Total Alumni Giving: 2009](<a href=“http://blogs.wsj.com/financial-adviser/2010/02/05/alumni-giving-to-higher-education-dropped-sharply-in-2009/tab/article/]Top”>http://blogs.wsj.com/financial-adviser/2010/02/05/alumni-giving-to-higher-education-dropped-sharply-in-2009/tab/article/)</p>
<p>1 Stanford University $650,107,311
2 Harvard University 601,636,000
3 Cornell University 446,768,922
4 University of Pennsylvania 439,768,922
5 Johns Hopkins University 433,387,640
6 Columbia University 413,358,859
7 University of Southern California 368,981,377
8 Yale University 358,147,948
9 University of California, LA 351,688,985
10 University of Wisconsin-Madison 341,805,035</p>
<p>Source: Council for Aid to Education</p>
<p>“At the risk of turning this into a Trojan-esque discussion with sexual innuendos, if size matters it does have to take a backseat to … overall satisfaction. Alumni giving should also show a direct correlation to the capacity of donating and the degree of satisfaction with the education received, and perhaps a perception of having spent precious resources well. Since it would be hard to argue that the LACs listed by Clinton all very high COE, it must be equally hard to argue that the students who attended a LAC are not … satisfied.”</p>
<p>I agree xiggi. There are no false positives in this case. But there are many false negatives. Just because large public universities have low alumni donation rates does not mean their alums are not satisfied with the education they received.</p>
<p>Colm, I know that the link uses the title “Alumni Giving”, so it is not your fault, but that is a false statement.</p>
<p>Do some research and let us know what those figures represent. You will find that much comes from institutions and not alumni, and it is very related to the Medical Schools of those Universities.</p>
<p>Additionally, listing the amounts received by colleges from alumni donations can be very misleading considering it does not take into account that smaller schools (obviously) have significantly less alumni than larger schools.</p>
<p>JA, you are right that the above reference from the Wall Street Journal used the words “alumni giving” in the article’s overall title, and then used “amount raised” in the inset chart. The equation for funds raised from individual alumni versus the amount garnered from institutional donations varies widely from school to school, and the article never addressed this issue. The article also seemed to imply that the figures were solely from alumni giving, and that may not be the case. Thanks for the clarification.</p>
<p>Consider this, you can hire hundreds of people to go after $50 alumni donations and have a high % of alumni givers or you hire 50 high level development people that go after big donors and foundations and raise FAR more total money much more efficiently. Which would you choose and why?</p>
<p>Why would you suggest that Brandeis is declining?</p>
<p>bump…</p>
<p>Michigan State University (MSU) with +0.5 in HC PA score will most likely move up a couple of spots. The school operates quite a few well-established residential colleges, and had recently landed one of the most powerful, next generation nuclear physics facilities in the world. Additional physics faculties had been hired as the direct result both for undergrad/grad teaching and research which certainly translates into improving its overall academic standing. </p>
<p>“The Facility for Rare Isotopes Beams (FRIB) is a planned research facility to with focus on rare nuclear isotopes and their role in the evolution of the cosmos. The $550 million project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and is being designed by Michigan State University, with construction expected to begin on campus around 2013. It will be part of the current National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University.”</p>
<p>Offical FRIB Website: <a href=“http://www.frib.msu.edu/[/url]”>http://www.frib.msu.edu/</a></p>
<p>*Note: The DOE sponsored FRIB project expects additional 200+ full-time scientists be hired by the school within the next 5 yrs or so. FRIB is set to debut between 2015~2017. Go State! :D</p>
<p>Alexandre said:
</p>
<p>Interesting, but how could this be done exactly. Isn’t the point of using alumni giving rates the idea that it’s the most accurate measure of satisfaction? I am not saying it is, by any means, but how could you measure what you are proposing?</p>