USNWR 2009: Looking at the Top Strata VI (Alumni Giving)

College Search & Selection
1

<p>The publication of the 2009 USNWR College Rankings provides an opportunity to compare schools based on a wide variety of data points. In this and in other threads, I urge the reader to think less about the absolute rankings and more about the nature and value-added of the data point being discussed. </p>

<p>% of Alumni Giving , National University</p>

<p>60% , Princeton
53% , Dartmouth
51% , Notre Dame
43% , Yale
41% , Harvard
40% , Duke
40% , Brown
38% , U Penn
37% , MIT
37% , Wash U
36% , Stanford
36% , Columbia
36% , Emory
34% , Cornell
34% , Rice
33% , Johns Hopkins
32% , U Chicago
30% , Northwestern
29% , Caltech
28% , Georgetown
25% , Vanderbilt
24% , U Virginia
22% , Carnegie Mellon
14% , UC Berkeley
14% , UCLA</p>

<p>% of Alumni Giving , LACs</p>

<p>64% , Carleton
61% , Amherst
60% , Williams
58% , Middlebury
55% , Bowdoin
54% , Davidson
51% , Wesleyan
50% , Swarthmore
50% , Wellesley
49% , Haverford
48% , W&L
48% , Colby
47% , Pomona
45% , Claremont McK
43% , Grinnell
43% , Colgate
43% , Hamilton
43% , Bates
42% , Bryn Mawr
42% , Macalester
41% , Oberlin
38% , Harvey Mudd
38% , Smith
35% , Vassar
34% , US Military Acad
23% , US Naval Acad</p>

2

<p>Some of the differences here may be smaller or larger than they appear. IIRC, alumni giving doesn't have some carefully-defined set of rules for how an institution counts contributions. They do specify bachelor grads only, but other variables remain. For example, if the school requires a contribution for perks like particular season tickets for arts events or revenue sports, does that count? If two alumni are married, does a donation from one count as a donation from both?</p>

<p>I can't imagine variation in policies would yield a huge difference in overall rates reported, but small differences might erase, or slightly widen,the gap between similar institutions.</p>

3

<p>Berkeley just announced its new fundraising initiative called "The Campaign for Berkeley". The campaign has a goal to raise $3 billion by June 30, 2013.<br>
The</a> Campaign for Berkeley</p>

<p>I think they should have been even more aggressive with their target.</p>

4

<p>University of Florida is only 2 years into a $1.5 billion Capital Campaign. We are almost at the $800 million mark, and still have 3 more years to go.</p>

5

<p>Top institutions in total support
Stanford University $832,344,826<br>
Harvard University $613,985,000
University of Southern California $469,646,622
Johns Hopkins University $430,455,336
Columbia University $423,849,107
Cornell University $406,925,075
University of Pennsylvania $392,420,770
Yale University $391,315,420
Duke University $372,328,154
University of California at Los Angeles $364,779,738
Massachusetts Institute of Technology $329,158,304
University of Chicago $328,328,020
University of Wisconsin at Madison $325,336,779
University of Washington $300,199,601
University of Michigan $293,403,123
University of Minnesota $288,750,059
New York University $287,587,458
University of Virginia $282,610,619
Indiana University $278,553,274
University of California at San Francisco $251,945,342</p>

6

<p>Centre College should be among the top 10 LACs - their alumni giving rate is over 50%.</p>

7

<p>Holy Cross has an alumni giving rate of 55%.</p>

8

<p>IMO, this is the single most idiotic statistic in the US News ranking system. </p>

<p>Who cares? It mostly tells us how aggressive and effective the school's development staff is in soliciting funds from alumni---and in a way, it doesn't even tell us that, because it doesn't tell us anything about the average size of the alumni gift. Frankly, I'd rather have a development operation that landed 2 alumni gifts of $10+ million, 10 alumni gifts of $1+ million, and 50 alumni gifts of $50K +, than a staff that busted its butt to get 1,000 alumni gifts of $100 each. Do the math: the former is worth at least $32,500,000 from a mere 62 gifts, while the latter is worth $100,000 from 1,000 gifts. So we're supposed to think the school that gets 1,000 small gifts is somehow "better" than the school that gets $32.5 million from 62 gifts?</p>

<p>Nor is there any reason to suppose the percentage of alumni making donations is a proxy for alumni satisfaction with the school as it presently exists. In the first place, there's the question of unequal effort on the part of the schools, as above. </p>

<p>Second, average alumni giving is, if I understand it correctly, measured as a percentage of all living alumni, not just recent graduates. A school could have fierce loyalty among older alumni but not so much among recent alumni and still do reasonably well on this score. Or vice versa---a school that has made rapid recent strides could have a strong giving rate among recent alumni, not so much so among those who graduated 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago, and earn a mediocre overall alumni giving score. The link to the satisfaction of recent grads is simply too remote to be worth anything.</p>

<p>Third, this is a measure that clearly disadvantages publics. Until fairly recently, most of them didn't even seriously look for private philanthropy; they were primarily taxpayer-supported institutions, they didn't seek much in the way of alumni support, and their alums generally felt they had already "given" through the state tax code. This view was (and to some extent still is) most pronounced in those states that historically were most generous in supporting their public higher education institutions. In those states, alumni came to view public universities as a core function of state government, and older alumni in particular tend to resent university appeals for alumni support as essentially a reflection of the state's being in default of its public obligations, which a private citizens they are in no mood to assume. My guess is schools like Berkeley, Virginia, and Michigan get substantially lower giving rates from their older alums than from more recent grads, and certainly far lower giving rates among their alums who are 20, 30, 40, and 50 years out than the privates get. Does this have anything to do with the school's quality, or even with how alums feel toward their school? I think not.</p>

9

<p>I have had a chance to gather the information on the next 25 National Universities and, in response to the requests of some, will include them in future threads. Below are the reprinted results of the USNWR Top 50 National Universities and I also show a separate listing for public universities.</p>

<p>I think that bclinton makes a lot of good points above and I would completely agree that publics should not be evaluated and ranked using this variable. Unless you want to include tax contributions, in which case the alumni giving rates for the publics would be close to 100%. </p>

<p>Alumni Giving Rate , National University</p>

<p>60% , Princeton
53% , Dartmouth
51% , Notre Dame
43% , Yale
41% , Harvard
40% , Duke
40% , Brown
38% , U Penn
38% , USC
37% , MIT
37% , Wash U
36% , Stanford
36% , Columbia
36% , Emory
34% , Cornell
34% , Rice
33% , Johns Hopkins
33% , Brandeis
33% , Lehigh
32% , U Chicago
32% , Wake Forest
31% , Georgia Tech
30% , Northwestern
29% , Caltech
28% , Georgetown
25% , Vanderbilt
24% , U Virginia
23% , Tufts
23% , U North Carolina
23% , W&M
23% , Yeshiva
23% , Tulane
22% , Carnegie Mellon
22% , Penn State
21% , Boston Coll
19% , UC Santa Barbara
18% , U Michigan
18% , U Rochester
18% , Rensselaer
17% , U Washington
17% , U Florida
16% , U Texas
14% , UC Berkeley
14% , UCLA
14% , U Illinois
14% , Case Western
13% , U Wisconsin
13% , UC Irvine
12% , UC Davis
11% , NYU
8% , UCSD</p>

<p>Alumni Giving Rate , Public University</p>

<p>31% , Georgia Tech
24% , U Virginia
23% , U North Carolina
23% , W&M
22% , Penn State
19% , UC Santa Barbara
18% , U Michigan
17% , U Washington
17% , U Florida
16% , U Texas
14% , UC Berkeley
14% , UCLA
14% , U Illinois
13% , U Wisconsin
13% , UC Irvine
12% , UC Davis
8% , UCSD</p>

10

<p>
[quote]
11% , NYU

[/quote]

:eek: .....</p>

11

<p>UCBChemEGrad:</p>

<p>What is your point? With $287,587,458 raised in fiscal 2007, NYU is among 20 top fundraising universities, in 18th place. It's the total that counts.</p>

12

<p>UCBChemEGrad:</p>

<p>A follow up. Fiscal 2008 has been truly spectacular for NYU fundraising. With one month left, the total amount raised is $698 million! </p>

<p>See, for example, the article in Craine's
Local</a> universities report banner fundraising years - Crain's New York Business</p>

13

<p>An interesting [url=<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VB9-45F8XH1-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=32e4b47c6609db06b24e668efd5db7fd%5Dstudy%5B/url"&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VB9-45F8XH1-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=32e4b47c6609db06b24e668efd5db7fd]study[/url&lt;/a&gt;] on "Alumni giving to elite private colleges and universities" was published in 2003 in Economics of Education Review, 22:109-120. Findings included the following:

[quote]
...Higher levels of contributions are associated with higher income, whether or not the person graduated from the institution where he or she first attended college, and the degree of satisfaction with his or her undergraduate experience. Their satisfaction in turn was a function of particular aspects of that experience, including whether there was someone who took a special interest when he or she was enrolled there...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>If these results are valid, then high giving rates might be associated with (1) schools that generate wealthy alumni; (2) schools with high graduation rates, and (3) schools where faculty or staff take "special interest" in undergraduates. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to suggest that (3) might be associated with (a) smaller schools, and/or (b) schools with particular or exclusive focus on undergraduate education. </p>

<p>One is forced to admit that the empirical data do seem consistent with these predictions. In general, the schools with the highest alumni giving rates do seem to be smaller, with a pronounced or exclusive undergraduate focus.</p>

14

<p>But how many of those NYU pledges will get paid now?</p>

15

<p>Barrons:</p>

<p>Don't you think that this question can be asked for any university? NYU is not going to fare worse in this respect than other top 20 fundrasing universities.</p>

<p>By the way, I find it amusing how often on CC people try hard to put a negative spin on just about anything positive in connection with NYU.</p>

16

<p>I wonder how those alumni giving rates translate into dollars per alumnus. As much as I like GT, their high rate suggests to me that most of the amounts are rather modest because engineer salaries aren't crazy high.</p>

17

<p>We still think of NYU as that school that advertised on the subway.;-)
and seriously, with NYU's concentration in the city hit most by the finance meltdown and that proclaimed itself as a conduit to Wall Street, it's not just idle speculation. Those song and dance majors won't be making up the difference.</p>

18

<p>
[quote]
What is your point?

[/quote]

atnyu, my point was to express surprise by the statistic. I thought it would be higher.</p>

19

<p>Barrons,</p>

<p>Oh really? And just where are all those wealthy alumni of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton making their millions, if not in New York, on Wall Street?! Maybe in North Dakota? Idaho?</p>

<p>Come on, if the Wall Street meltdown will affect the fundraising of NYU, it will hit equally hard, if not more, the fundraising of any other top university.</p>

20

<p>
[quote]
Those song and dance majors won't be making up the difference.

[/quote]

Haha! typical sharp-tongued comment from barrons. Barrons, how are you going to be paid when all those finance people cancel their subscription to your newspaper?...I'm sure you have tremendous insight into this mess.</p>

<p>:D j/k</p>

<p>How much are those Broadway actors and Radio City Rockettes paid?</p>